One Piece Drabbles and One Shots
by Harmonica Smile
Summary: Drabbles and One Shots: Some transferred from AO3 to FFN. Lawcentric. 1:Punk Hazard, 2:LawBin, 3:Luffy/Meat, 4:Bepo & Law (platonic), 5:Bepo, Shachi, Penguin & Law (platonic), 6:Law & Strawhats (platonic), 7:pre MarLaw, Tashigi (birthdays), 8. MarLaw, Smoker (humour), 9:ZoLaw 10&11:Blowing bubbles, 12:MarLaw, ZoLu, 13. Law & others, 14: Zoro & Kuina., 15&: Various.
1. Father Figure - Punk Hazard

**Father Figure**

* * *

A grunt, a dreg, a G5 recruit that no-one gave a shit about—except Vice-Admiral Vergo—had a question for the pirate, Trafalgar Law. The surprise shichibukai. Scum one, scum all.

Just a few hours previously, he and Smo-yan had pulled that huge tub on wheels through the factory, and they all escaped with the ceiling spitting slabs of vengeance and spite. Smoker's expression pinned the man on his left with the same threat, though he hadn't laid a hand on him. How'd he get the ratbag to co-operate?

Both were bruised and scratched.

And maybe a few hours before that, before their final skedaddle to safety, Smoker, Law and Strawhat Luffy had stood, surrounded by the flattened bodies of Casesar's subordinates, near the entrance of the research facility—poisonous gas banking up outside, their colleagues hammering at the shuttered gates, freezing in the deep snow.

The three stood tall up there on the mechanics of Vegapunk's factory. Separator tanks bubbled and gears turned with a whine as the gates opened, ensuring shelter for their frantic comrades.

Smoker was _the_ man. And Captain Tashigi stood right behind him—and the demon child—the light gradually revealing them as the shutters rose.

Then the shichibukai spoke down to them as if he was controlling the lives of navy men, as if he _w_as in control. Longsword over his back, hands stained with shadowy affiliations.

It hurt to hear.

But he'd given them the timeframe in which he—_he?_—could protect their safety. Provided a route. Surely it would've been beneficial to him if they were all wiped out? If he'd kept his mouth shut. Didn't seem to be his aim.

What was he up to? His reputation was on the grisly side of gruesome. And that was saying a lot. G5 wasn't for sissies.

* * *

Smoker and Trafalgar Law supped Blackleg's broth. Steam and breath were indistinguishable in the cold. As snow papered the sky, white dusted the black coat trimmed with the Heart pirates Jolly Roger.

Sure, so close to safety, the pirate had wanted to depart with the kids they'd rescued, with the Strawhats present, with the marines in the room, and those of Caesar's underlings who'd survived. Mugiwara wasn't having it, waiting for the rest of his crew and those they were helping; those who were helping them.

But the grunt could see the sense in saving the majority and mourning the minority. It wasn't selfish. The roof was collapsing, poisonous gas closing in. But the Strawhats had great faith or foolhardiness—he wasn't sure which.

He _had_ been glad to see the navy medical unit as they struggled under the weight of the giant girl they'd helped rescue, making it to the carriage just as another set of doors closed behind them, the toxic fumes released by Caesar hot on their heels.

.

Smoker chewed his cigars and turned them in the corner of his mouth like idling a car at the lights.

G5 scraped and slaved but didn't bow to anyone until they'd earned it or they'd beaten subservience into the scrappy unit. Escape successful, they'd painted a line down the loading bay they'd exited into, waiting for the cyborg and marines to patch up Doflamingo's confiscated tanker.

Law sat on a crate on the side of the criminals, the pirates. Smoker mirrored him on the side of justice, even though the Strawhats and kids and hungry infantrymen circled and cheered and chowed down together, ignoring the line.

Both lifted their bowls one-handed, sipped, and eyed the marine.

"What?" Smoker asked. "Spit it out."

The grunt's boots were tough and worn, his cape warm, loose and cowled. A bucket concealed his hair, the only thing available to cover his head. Once. Then it stuck. And never came off. G5 stencilled onto the steel.

"Wanna ask you—" he pointed at Law, hand shaking, though the might of the World Government was on his side "—a question." That man had put the navy on _its_ side, or its warship, and jumbled the bodies of his friends. Sliced and quartered them like sides of beef, even if they reformed once they left his spooky power.

"Ask," Smoker said.

Black fleece hid half of Trafalgar Law's face. The marine wasn't sure if his eyes were stone, or ready to transform the weak to granite if he glared at them long enough, with enough ill-will.

**oOOo**

Law had things to do. Baby 5, Buffalo, Caesar. A Flamingo to bait and lure. He _shick_ed Kikoku an edge from her sheath. Zoro's ears pricked, even with tankard in arm, an arm around a navy buddy, and ale guzzling down his muzzle.

The grunt shook but blurted out, "Imposter-Vergo flew away when they announced you'd entered D-block."

Law pushed Kikoku back into the scabbard with a clink and waited.

"What happened to him?"

He looked back up at the marine, ignored Smoker to his right, though the vice-admiral's careful indifference was obvious.

"Imposter-Vergo?"

The shichibukai's tone, that scrape of voice, was a misstep in manners. Who did he think he was? "Vice-Admiral Vergo-_sama_."

Law's eyes flared, but he let it go. Smoker got the demeaning _kun_ after his name, as if Vergo had sixty years on him and had known him as a child. Maybe he'd trained him as a recruit. The marines demanded Law address any one of their kind politely and fully expected him not to. Scum of the sea.

He sipped the broth again, bare hands used to the biting cold—he grew up with it after all, survived amber lead, Doflamingo and blizzards—not taking his gaze from the man in front of him.

Law was the same age that Cora had been when Doflamingo snuffed out his benefactor's life. Doflamingo at twenty-eight had been two years older and hardly an elder. Law didn't care how many times the Family called him a brat, he'd witnessed firsthand the destruction upstarts wreaked. Had seen rules and deference raze towns to dust.

"Vergo sama is a great man, Smo-yan." The grunt was surprised when Smoker's eyes lit with almost the same burn. Maybe Smoker wanted him to use 'sama' too? But Vice-Admiral Vergo _was_ a real gentleman. It couldn't be denied.

"Tashigi-chan—"

"Captain Tashigi." Smoker held his cigars between his forefinger, middle and ring finger.

The grunt nodded. "She said—she _knew_—Vergo was like a father to us strays. She said that man with his haki, and bamboo iron, and finger pistol—the one who got her good and smashed her into to the ground..." Here he slapped his palm with the back of his hand. Fake Vergo had haki-punched her clear across the face. The concrete cracked when she fell. "She said the real Vergo would never do that. Never hurt us." _Nuh-unh_, never-ever-ever.

Vergo had sped through the air like that once before—to save one of his own men when he fell down an embankment in a drunken stupor, two stupid stumbles shy of a freezing lake.

The marine knuckled the metal on his head. Sure got noisy in there. Remembered his friend petrified on the other side of a gate in Caesar's laboratory. The G5 recruits who couldn't afford caps wore cleaning hardware.

Trafalgar Law rested his bowl to the side, cupped that ugly tattooed-hand behind his neck, and pulled it one way, then lifted the other arm to his head, and pulled it the opposite direction. Dropped his shoulders, nodachi always near, stared directly at Smoker. No respect whatsoever. The grunt's fingers curved around the hilt of his machete. He felt the warlord trace his movement even though he wasn't looking his way.

"Made a mistake in returning your heart."

Whatever that meant. "The real Vice-Admiral Vergo is an honourable man who always defends his band of outcasts," the infantryman stated. Conviction the core of his being. "Sir."*

Law knew the courtesy was not for him.

Smoker intended scouring the files on the North Blue pirate when he got the chance. Vergo and Caesar and Doflamingo's sneering words indicated Law's deep ties to that den of thieves, but he'd definitely fallen from grace.

Vergo had shown his true face—true strength and menace to Law many years ago. The Heart captain let Underground secrets spill when they were caged together.

In the SAD manufacturing room, Doflamingo spoke of past beatings, the den den mushi an amused snarl, listing Law's shortcomings, his idiocy in thinking beyond enclosures that kept flunkies safe. Useful.

He praised his swordplay.

Vergo chastised Law—an ungrateful serf who dreamt caste was a role to surpass, not a position ordained. Was all too happy to compress Law's heart to infarction for the smallest infraction.

Tashigi fought bravely, not that Smoker would tell her. They all collected bruises, but Vergo was a threshing machine. Subordinate, superior, equal, child, enemy—all fell to his determination to safeguard subterfuge, to not disappoint his employer. To complete the mission at all costs.

In which bed did Law's loyalty lie?

He wondered why he'd never informed them about the turncoat. In some way. After all, the next step for Law was Green Bit. The source, the youngest shichibukai himself. The intel stated clearly to Smoker. But pirates lie. Only a fool trusted their utterances. Especially Law. Nothing straightforward about the guy.

**oOOo**

Pirate Cora or marine? Which was the false Cora-san? The false Corazon? Law clung to the childhood title because, even though he'd got to know the man away from the role, neither had the chance to properly reinvent themselves outside their Family positions, to present themselves as they truly were to the other. To come to terms with death and survival. Rebirth.

Law was a doctor no_w. What do you think of that, Cora-san? _He'd _end_ Doflamingo—or Kaido would—and imposter-Vergo-san had been stopped dead in his tracks. Yeah. Imposter was a good definition for the Bamboo Demon. Rang true.

.

"Fake Vergo went up in smoke with the factory. I sliced him and hung his body parts on pikes like a carcass cut, salted and hung to dry. He sang Joker's praises until the end."

The shichibukai described murder as if it pegging socks to the line. A mundane task. "Joker?"

"Doflamingo," Smoker spat. Law glanced up at the clouds, wiped a speck of snow from his eye.

"The real Vice-Admiral's safe, then?" the man smiled easily. Happily. G5 _were_ worth something to such a refined man. They'd see him again, be under his protection.

Law shrugged, stood and cut across the snow while it lay powdered and fresh. There were kinder ways to understand that everything wasn't what it seemed than being an onlooker—a survivor—of genocide and fratricide, but fodder didn't need to think.

If contempt was all that was known, a kind word—like air spread from the flap of a harpy's wings—resounded. Gratitude ran deep, servility was an honour, a vision shared was purpose to live. To die.

The marine eyed the mouthful of soup left in the bowl on the crate and dove for it, stopped himself, then dove again once Smoker waved his hand, a flick of approval.

**oOOo**

Frozen from the Arctic waters, bruised from fighting the Straw Hats, the fruit users sick with sea water and stone, Caesar, Baby 5, and Buffalo were wrapped in sacks and blankets. The noise of the banquet filled the air now that Shinokuni's fumes had blown away. Law guessed he had Buffalo to thank.

Law easily decapitated the panicked propeller boy and blade girl with the use of his devil's fruit, Caesar gibbering, though they knew they'd reassemble if their body parts were left in the same region. Shame that wasn't the case.

The lifeboat from the tanker, the Family's Jolly Roger fluttering overhead, reminded him of the skip he and Cora took across the waters seeking a cure for his illness. Growing sicker and sicker and sicker, and not from the rough seas.

It was impossible to offer physical solace when your body lay headless in the snow, and an adversary (who used to be your brother) strapped you to a raft. Baby 5 and Buffalo babbled and Buffalo comforted the woman with his words. Law's pointed stare reduced her to tears. Buffalo soothed and scolded, then asked for an increase to the loan she'd promised him for the casino. She agreed in a quick rush, all the while letting Law know exactly how the young master would destroy him. Their confidence in Doflamingo was unshakeable.

Vergo was like a father to G5. Their father, their imposter-traitor, had accelerated Cora-san's demise. Law knew he had a father. Knew well. Cora-san had reminded him. About his mother too. But, without that prompt, without Cora's headlong and reckless heart, would he have returned to himself, or still be serving Doflamingo blindly? Content so long as his purpose was defined and valued? A cow grazing a field of clover, unaware of bloat.

Tightening the chains around Baby 5 and Buffalo, he set the timer and lit a fuse for the explosives in a bucket on the floor of the raft. The den den really hadn't done anything to be left in such distasteful company, but what needed doing needed to be done. He missed the bowler the snail sported, his old style, but the cap he wore now cut the ocean glare.

What had Buffalo and Baby 5 felt when they learnt of Cora's betrayal, his death in the snow? Saved them a few beatings. How had they spoken to Vergo? If they saw the first Corazon now, what greetings would they use?

The world government needed fodder. The expendable. Pirate crews, Revolutionaries, the Underworld—sought the same. Fodder needed ideals. Let G5 have their father, even if Law couldn't have his own.

Knowledge, held and withheld, usually worked in his favour.

* * *

**A/N**: The upper echelons would have to be informed of Vergo's betrayal, and I've touched upon the guilt Sengoku must have felt in sending Vergo to Swallow Island (if Law ever expanded upon his and Cora's story with him) in other work.

But I always found it really unfair that Tashigi (at least) kept Vergo's pristine reputation intact to salve the egos and psyches of G5, while those who'd long been victims to his tactics continued to be vilified, or in the case of the families, left without an honest explanation.

Probably her words were words for the moment to make sure G5 made it out of Caesar's labs, but I don't think we've got any new info on how the marines reported his treason. Correct me if I'm wrong. Just leave a note in the comments. I'll have a Law/Tashigi conversation at some point. That's a future fic.

* This is a paraphrase from the English translation manga.

Thanks for reading. I love to chat. If you liked it, all forms of feedback are met with open arms.


	2. The endling and the terminarch - LawBin

**The endling and the terminarch**

* * *

Blue, kinda blue. Cigarette smoke stack curls unfurls trumpet spread like a hand of cards, one hidden up the sleeve to wipe the floor the table with a quick wink, a sly trick, she leans into his palm on her lower back against the triangle seam of the little black dress. Hah.

Four years between them and four centimetres in height. Metric soulmates. Rain streaks the panes of their living room, replacing clear glass with frosted to give them this moment alone. Four floors above the city. They don't need the rain.

West-blue-black warmed by the sun — a heat his scrawl of North-blue-black kinks and knots seeks. Needs. Not quite peas in a pod. Translucent, sombre, velvet, love and disregard for crayon drawings. As a child he left sandwiches unwrapped and mouldy in the bottom of his schoolbag (or fed them to Buffalo). She ordered them especially when she could.

When Robin looks up at him, sometimes it's like sitting at the bottom of a well and seeing stars in broad daylight. Not because of height, there's barely a sneeze between them.

He knows she can snap necks and hold dead weight, which he would've been if Doflamingo had succeeded in his _mercy_ killing, if she hadn't caught him. Forgiven by death. Joker's cognition sticky like new year's omochi pounded and turned.

"You were nervous when CPO walked through town." He speaks into her cheek, holds her. There'd been a report on yet another reverie and Rob Lucci appeared and disappeared from the cameras — silent bodyguards to dragons who'd have their pirate heads for witnessing government crimes.

"You knew who they were." Like yesterday, Dressrosa creeps in — wind rattling the fly screen against its frame.

Law tilts his head in agreement. No point in not being informed. Serious stuff always hidden like the disease that didn't get to wipe out his town. She loves him for it.

"Feel safe now?" he asks.

She moves closer. Pushing into his chest. Both barefoot in the house, she's lost a few centimetres.

They'll dance, something Viola taught her — Señor Pink had taught him — some flamenco, rhumba, tango Latin passion, that Luffy ruins with too much enthusiasm when he tries. And lack of height. That Sanji ruins with too much attention, when he tries. And lack of height.

A trace of menace and a shoe with a clip, to step forward, and back and to bring the other to you and let them go without letting them go. Law has the heels and the altitude. Anything to give him a few inches in the company of executives and corrupt kings. But she doesn't feel like unfurling right now. He doesn't feel like letting go. And their feet are quiet on the wooden floor.

"Yeah, but not because of you." Maybe it was the rain.

"The disguise didn't work?" He hadn't been feeling too confident in Dressrosa either, but there were always options — like Franky's coup de burst — and there they were, doling calm and sugar in equal measures to a panicked Caesar and Usopp and cups of tea.

Riding high from quartering Vergo, and sticking his sliced (gabby) head on a pike or two, Law had glanced around. Things weren't right. He had his tea black and unsweetened but, you know, undercover. The spoon hit the china as he stirred. The city was peaceful and cheerful despite Doflamingo's abdication, toys and humans walking hand in hand. CP0 windmilling through the streets.

She laughs. Her aviator glasses and pith-helmet-hat (cloth, mind you), his seventies porn star 'tash and shades, and running around with his chest so wide open that anyone who knew anything — aka Doflamingo and his cronies — could pinpoint who he was and where. Then again, he'd set up the rendezvous. They'd tried. One disguise was as good as the next in the world of paper doll options. Form was emptiness, emptiness form.

She runs a finger on the rough of his sideburn, and he tips his head. "Scary mofos. Masks like death-wishes," he says.

CPO — show girls hiding behind the ruffled flipped skirts of a cancan.

"The only thing they wish death on is others."

"Party poopers."

She takes his hand and wishes death upon herself with battle-worn fingers, though he can always heal himself. He argues he can when he's going out on a limb (between the two of them, they have more than a few to spare). As if deciding to blow up a factory, and level another, and take down a few warlords and emperors was the epitome of prudence.

He plans but punts when needed, so she takes what he says with a dash of salt and judges him on the tangible, like swapping a hurtling, knocked-out Luffy from the sky to a rooftop ledge.

"Why didn't they hunt you down, Law, when they knew the fruit and a boy had vamoosed?" She rests her hands under his arms now, the skin on his elbows like camel hides. Easy to forget the out of sight. Bit slack for a surgeon. His shirt is musty with the closer weather. Laundry day, but nothing will dry.

Haven't they had this discussion? Instead of pushing his own hair back he clips that wayward kink behind her ear. The first time he saw her she had a fringe.

"Doflamingo thought the marines had me. Vergo would've set him right. Heart seat was kept for me." Law's voice tightens with disgust. Robin brushes her fingers on his Adam's apple and he brings himself back to the room with the tap of the wind outside. Gotta get that flyscreen fixed.

"But just lucky with the marines I guess." Why Sengoku didn't track him down out of sorrow or vengeance he didn't know. Curiosity. He holds her close because so few have, and she'll send anyone else flying if they try, but Law's earned it. "Sorry you had to run for so long."

She had a Bounty at eight, Law was a pirate at ten, then again Dellinger was practically born into it. But Robin had no Wolf, no guardian once everything was taken from her. Dellinger had Jora, had the family, as fucked up as they could be.

"I found a way."

"Croc would've been nothing without you."

"You weren't there."

"From what I heard."

And she trusted his sources.

"Maybe I don't want that on my CV, Surgeon of Death."

"Ouch." Point taken.

It got them where they were. Law raises his left arm to the side of his body and brings the other to rest just below Nico Robin's shoulder blades. She raises her right and closes her fingers over Law's, her other hand nestled in the centre of his spine. "Still got two left feet, terminarch?"

That's why he used his Room to teleport rather than running, he thought. Two left feet were slightly more elegant than Cora's gait of no co-ordinates at all. Zoro's sense of direction.

His breath skates over her face as he laughs and centres. "Been practicing with Bepo."

"Best I take the lead then?" Neither of them are wearing heels after all.

"Perhaps."

She steps forward with her left then right and Law follows, always willing to adapt circumstances to his own advantage, whether from necessity or choice.

* * *

**A/N:** Just some sweet LawBin.


	3. Luffy's One True Love - Drabble (100w)

Luffy's One True Love

* * *

**A/N:** An invisible red thread connects those destined to meat. Luffy's true love was best grilled, roasted or fried.

* * *

An invisible red thread connects those destined to meat. That was Luffy. He didn't get how the thread was red if it was invisible, but maybe it had to do with sinew and cartilage. Connective tissue was hard to see. That's if he knew what cartilage was. Or how to spell it. Or that sinew could be red if there was blood.

He guessed it was the red-stringy-white bits, or was that fat? They definitely pulled him towards meat. It was better cooked though, but everything was meat until it was a friend. Chopper still looked delicious in certain lights.


	4. Placentas, Ire, Protectors - Bepo, Law

**Placentas, Ire, Protectors**

A rebirth of sorts, catching up with Captian on Zou and sailing with him to Wano. He was still rude. Still disregarded them. Didn't take them to see the ninja when all the Strawhat crew got to go. How Was that fair? Sure, they were twenty-strong, but surely Shachi, Penguin and Bepo were as important as the racoon dog, the cyborg and the sharp-shooter? As important as the samurai they had run into fuck knows where.

Not only that, but the Guardians of the Forest — the very forest the Hearts couldn't leave because they were pirates and relegated to a leafy nocturnal water world — guarded the Whale Tree, and within the Whale Tree resided Raizo, the Ninja. Good enough to protect others, but not good enough to see what they were protecting? Ah well, Bepo scratched under the collar of his jumpsuit, it was the way of minions everywhere. What was the point of resentment?

Captain got caught up in things for sure, but not really the petty stuff. Even so. They'd done some serious fighting in his absence. The Hearts. The Curly Hat Crew. The Minks. Chopper had helped them out with their injuries. Even that clown had. And they were severe. Especially Master Nekomamushi, and from what they'd heard, Duke Inuarashi.

Bepo, Shachi and Penguin had travelled with Law since meeting him on Swallow Island way back when. He knew how they felt about ninjas. They knew how Law felt about ninjas. Kinda lost his crumpled-paper-bag-abandoned-in-a-snow-storm sheen when they were mentioned. And they didn't laugh at him, because, ninjas! But he didn't invite them along.

At least they got to party with the Minks and the Strawhats. Luffy was a lot of fun. Maybe Captain could learn a bit about inclusivity. But it would be rude if they hadn't partied. Bepo was a Mink. Pedro had known his brother. Was one of the guardians of the forest and so guardian of Bepo and the crew while Law was away. They'd fought for Nekomamushi. For Bepo's country.

Bitching and moaning between them was easily wiped away, of little consequence, when they'd seen Law along the path, following the vivre card on his outstretched palm. Not a matter of _if_ it would happen, but _when_. After Strawhat fighting the forest Guardians, garbling Law's name, and letting them know that Captain was on the island, it was only a matter of time before he found them. And there he was He'd come back. Tired, bandaged, determined, but leaning with Bepo's life-squeezing hug, the kind to have you flat on your back if the crew hadn't told him to rein it in. The point was, he didn't shamble Bepo away, or himself. Walked close by as they entered the forest. Bepo could sense his heat, his warmth, the blood underneath his skin.

Captain's anger linked bone to tendon, bone to bone. Didn't get in the way of function, was crucial for function, until it snapped. Rather than debilitate him, it propelled him forward, but it was preferable he did so without serious tears to ligaments and filigreed threads. He could be yelly but was usually calm. Seemed he got a bit yelly with the Strawhats. It _was_ like being swarmed by bumptious hornets. Bepo got that. They were fun though.

Doflamingo had a fine line in bait and switch too, and from what Law had told them, his needling was far superior to his own in terms of the harm he'd willingly inflict, especially upon a disloyal inferior. The switch more likely to be a cat 'o' nine tails. Law's bait and switch just put you on a different part of the sub. They'd not had much disloyalty among them. Bepo wondered what the punishment might be. Immersion in a barrel full of bread crumbs?

"You defeated Doflamingo!"

"Mugiwara did." Law steadied his backpack, tugged down his shirt. No frustration in the reply. A statement of facts. And as Bepo leant in blocking out the twenty crew members who wanted to do the same, he knew there was more to it. Law's eyes had flickered up to the patch on Bepo's cheek and Bepo's own landed on the bandage around Law's arm. They wouldn't get back the families they'd lost. One night Pedro sat down and told him about his big brother.

One guardian replaced the next, just as Law had used his power to heal him from the kicks and punches from Shachi and Penguin's own steel capped feet and mean pinched hands, that had laid into him for talking and walking. And just as Law and Bepo had gone on to save the orphaned boys from major injury. All before they'd had a chance to reach adulthood. But they did reach it.

Law couldn't have done that without Cora, without his family. The loss of one family, one town, everyone he knew rocketed him into an anger that saw a ten year old easily slice a grown man, saw him wear grenades like garlands. In intention. He was a bit lacking in delivery, but it wasn't a minor wound. Not a weak threat.

The loss of that same man concentrated anger into something quietly able to protect a life. The resin that pooled to form the other kind of amber. Law's powers packed a bucket load of bling, but his anger was reduced to its core elements. Rescuing a shaking Mink from the cold, removing a slave collar from a former pirate captain and offering both safe haven. Knowing how to address the man. Refusing to address those who demanded respect on the skull-end of a bamboo staff, under the weight of a jackboot.

His anger was still healthy, Bepo could sense it. Still directed against those who multiplied wrongs against wrongs and manipulated them in perpetuity. But maybe the memory of another man who'd lain in the snow knowing no help was coming could now push their Captain forward rather than embed him in the past.


	5. As Fast as he could Caper - Law, Hearts

**As fast as he could caper**

* * *

Bepo stood at the stove simmering the cider vinegar and dipping brown paper into it. Captain hit his head that morning, without the use of his Room. He didn't know when he'd learn that he was one metre ninety-one, and the entry way to the storage room was 1.87. Half the crew had to stoop to enter. Bepo and Jean Bart didn't even try. He'd sent Ikkaku to fetch the brown paper, and she'd screamed sexism, but he told her it was heightism, and who did she call when she wanted to get her cap back from where Shachi or Penguin had pegged it, well out of her reach?

She reddened. Of course she could get her own hat back, but she entered the room, got the paper for him, and the vinegar. Ironically, Law had been trying to enter the room in search of brown paper. Shachi and Penguin'd had a scuffle over who was on bog duty, never a pleasant task, and he'd needed the paper to treat their bruises. Guess who got stuck with cleaning the toilets. She wasn't happy.

They used brown packing paper, very coarse, but it absorbed the warmed up diluted vinegar well and reduced any inflammation. Bepo wasn't looking forward to changing the strips once everything fired up again, including tempers. Some used honey for sprains, but how much honey would you need? And a honey addict kept disappearing the sweet syrup from the sub anyway.

He'd read that brown and black bears broke through electric barriers surrounding hives to crunch up all the bees inside and to slurp down the treacly ambrosia. That was some heavy kind of habit, but he understood it.

You had to make sure the pieces were cool enough to place on the noggin, but not too cool. Captain sat at the kitchen table trying to glare, but his head was obviously throbbing, and the injury wasn't worth the energy of a Room. Shachi was at one end mumbling under his breath, and an equally bruised and scraped Penguin sat at the other, sporadically shouting, "What was that, arsehole?" and shutting down just as quickly as Law tiredly tilted his fingers upwards, sparking with blue. Dad could be such a drag.

However, they knew, probably as much as Bepo did, that Law was a bit out of sorts to properly set up a Room. So it was more dangerous. What if he couldn't realign what he misaligned? Though his off-kilter asymmetry in a Room really was a sight to hold. Bepo sometimes wished he could meet Jora just so he understood the foundation of Law's artistic skills. So Penguin bit at his lip and sat patiently as Bepo tapped the tongs on the edge of the pan a little louder than he needed to. Penguin knew Ikkaku was the one he should really be worried about, and he guessed he'd face her later.

Bepo approached Law with the strips — still holding together — and with a bunch of flannel workers' bandanas to tie around his crewmates' heads in best construction worker manner. Captain waved tattooed fingers at the two bickering ninnies first, without looking up from his book, though Bepo knew he was having some trouble focusing. He'd been on page 162 for half an hour, and Law taught the speed readers how to pick up the pace. But, Captain's orders.

"We've got magic. We've got modern. We've got methods. We've got state of the art." Penguin's words were kind of thick. Shachi had walloped him a few good ones. "And you're gonna fix me up with vinegar and brown paper?"

"Who said you get more flies with honey?" Bepo surveyed the three sorry souls in the kitchen area. Maybe they weren't attracted to the vinegar, but they were there for it. Plus, there was no honey. Some crackhead had eaten it all. He slapped a wet paper over Penguin's forehead before he could start complaining, and deftly tied a thin towel into a bandana to keep it in place, then jammed his cap back on his head to keep everything in order.

"You look kinda badass."

Penguin lit up. Law's apparent fascination at the same sentence in his book did a poor job of hiding the small smile. Bepo had been getting mouthy lately.

"Like you're going to pull on tabi socks and start climbing scaffolding," Shachi agreed.

"What was that, arsehole?" Penguin touched the back of his head where Bepo had tied the towel with some skill. He guessed he might look cool. "I mean…"

"Thanks?" Shachi ventured.

Penguin couldn't remember why they were fighting. The towel kept the warm paper against his skin, and the heat behind the bruising decreased. Smelt like a fish and chip shop.

Shachi's arm was badly bruised where Penguin had gripped it. It was some small grievance over locker space that tumbled into an argument about avoiding bog duty. Small grievances in such a confined space could be deadly.

Bepo draped the paper on Shachi's skin and gently pressed it against the swelling. He used a similar towel to keep the compression in place, and told Shachi to rest for about half an hour.

"I gotta sit in the same room as that guy for how long?"

"You've spent your lives together," Law said, "What's another thirty minutes?"

Law had people before Penguin and Shachi, and Bepo had family before Law and Penguin and Shachi, but Penguin and Shachi were lucky enough to nearly always have been Penguin and Shachi.

.  
.

Penguin rested his head on folded arms and napped. Shachi tried to figure out who'd carved graffiti into the table. "Meat." Had Strawhat left that behind the only time he'd been on the sub? He'd been comatose and then uncontrollable, so when had he got the chance? Who knew? Maybe it was someone with a similar dietary obsession.

Bepo placed his supplies on the table, careful not to spill anything, and to keep the strips all in one piece. The temperature should be perfect. He stood to the side of his captain for a second and Law glanced across at him with thirteen years of friendship.

Bepo knew Law could ride with a lot of pain because he always had. Amber Lead was no joke. A bump to the head wouldn't put him out of commission, and if it was the middle of battle or a visit to an island, a celebration for somebody's birthday, or even just time for everyone to pile in and devour whatever was served for lunch, he'd let the dull ache work its way into the bruise, running a background check on swelling and any increased discomfort. But they had time, so why not treat the injuries while they could?

Bepo removed Law's hat and his large paw pushed back his hair, gently touching the discoloured skin, noticing the minute twitch as the speckled gold in Law's grey eyes sparked like the edges of a fire escaping into a night sky. His hand kept his place in his book.

"Close your peepers. Don't want them to sting."

Law did.

Penguin wondered in his drowsy state why he never received the caution. Bepo was always playing favourites.

The navigator pasted the paper over Law's forehead, and as he'd done for Penguin, tied it in place with a worker's cloth bandana, simple colours, so effective for keeping out dust and sweat, for keeping in the cider vinegar that would draw out any nettles and reduce any bruising to a dab of colour. Captain looked cooler. He didn't need to be told.

Honey entrapped Bepo, that's for sure, he was jonesing for some right now, but vinegar neutralised friction and treated aches and wounds in a way that a sugary fix couldn't. Sure, if there was any syrup on board, Bepo knew it had its uses other than on the tastebuds of some purple-tongued thief.

"Open your eyes, Cap." He did, black bandana hiding whatever was bruised; earrings, a flash of colour; ink, unavoidable as Law rubbed his hands over his face. "You look like a pirate."

Law laughed against his palms. "Should I wear this all the time?"

Bepo shook his head. He liked Law's hat and spotted jeans and whatever top he'd decided suited his mood. Oh, he could rock a kimono too. Especially the haori, and he'd let him, Bepo, choose the one decorated with fish. He _loved_ that haori.

"Keep still for half an hour. Move on from page one hundred and sixty-two, and you should feel a whole lot better in thirty minutes."

"Yes, doc." Law's crew was made up of medical professionals after all, and Bepo was showing his healing hand right now.

Bepo moved to the sink with the items, discarding a few sopping leftover bits of paper into the bin. He tipped out the bit of diluted vinegar remaining and put the pan aside for the dishes to tackle after lunch.

It was so quiet. Had they murdered each other?

Wrapped with the Mink's folk knowhow, knowledge that others also used, the three friends sprawled over the table. Shachi and Penguin with faces pushed into their own drool. Both men peaceful, bandaged and healing. Law had flattened the book across his chest and sat back in his chair, chin on chest, and snored. Bepo liked the noise. If Law slept against him, it sent a rumble through his body.

Home remedies. That was where the heart was.

* * *

**Reddit: Aphorisms and Tropes: Daily Prompts for January. January 6 2019**: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Which kind of person is your character? Or do you have one of each? Describe how their personality helps them navigate a social situation. (400 words)

**January 7, 2019:** Working Through the Cold. Someone's a bit sick today, but obviously that's not going to slow them down. Right? (500 words)

About 1500 words. Only 600 over. I was loosey-goosey using the prompts, but these two appealed to me. Title is from the nursery rhyme, "Jack and Jill".

Thanks for reading. All feedback is appreciated.


	6. Out there in the pews-Law, Nami, baby

**Out there in the pews, let them cry**

* * *

**A/N:** Law's animal, according to Oda, is the spotted or Largha seal.

* * *

They handed the baby to Law. You wouldn't think it to look at the Heart captain—his face a weary spit-full of fuck off and die, or maybe that was just around the Strawhats—but no matter how much she cried he never lost his temper.

It was life and death. Practicality. Life in his arms. Life. Cora had carried him, kidnapped him, trussed him up and bundled him, but had never hugged him. There's no way in hell Law would've allowed him then, and they just never made it to that stage of their relationship where it might have been okay. Where he might have squirmed and protested but been grudgingly happy blanketed in a coatfull of feathers. He'd been thirteen. He'd stopped holding his mother's hand when he turned eight.

He didn't hug the baby now. He held her. Towel over his shoulder for the spit-up, patting her back with a cupped palm. She was too young to hug except with the lightest touch and the angle wasn't right.

Law was too big for it by the time Flevance fell, but he wished he'd let his mother embrace and kiss and even carry him more often. He'd been going to die. His mother knew it. His father knew it. His expiring sister knew it. They'd all pass away within a few years of one another. Where was the harm in letting in a little softness in the face of their promised demise?

The hugs he didn't give Lammy was on his list of regrets. By the time he'd wanted to hold his sister and not let her go—to stare down Amber Lead Syndrome—everything hurt her. She even wore a small heart-shaped cygnet ring, an amethyst in its corner, on a chain, because it pinched her fingers. She'd picked it out with their mother at the jewellers, excitedly scanning the display cases. They'd gone for a milkshake and toasted ham, cheese, and tomato sandwiches after. Law wasn't with them. Forget hugging. Sometimes he couldn't even hold her hand.

She was far too light and weak, even for his stunted ten-year-old self. Lammy needed assistance to walk. He'd helped lift her into the closet, to settle her in—she and her bear. A death sentence. Gunshots a backdrop, fire centre stage. Law inhaled the soothing scent of the baby's crown, her fine hair, her face scrunched, bawling away like Nami. So angry with the world. He knew the feeling.

He lifted his palm from her back and touched his thumb to a flailing hand, and one set of fingers, in total about as big as two of his earrings, wrapped around the digit. The baby clung and waved it back and forth while demanding air fill her lungs so she could push it out at the loudest volume. He winced and felt for Nami. Not quite 130 decibels but that level wasn't out of the range of medical records or military jet take-offs.

Another set of fingers was sure to find his earrings soon.

Sanji looked on to make sure the surgeon wasn't adding to the distress of Nami-swan's bubby, but the volume decreased a little, and throughout it all Law's attention was quietly on the little one, until she pulled the finger with 'H' into her mouth and chewed, both on her own fingers and Law's skin.

She thunked her head against his shoulder. He picked up a journal he'd been skimming, though he knew the chances of reading it without a hand scrunching up pages or the baby needing more were slim.

But she settled. Out of them all. Luffy with his instant charm, Robin's cool, Zoro's no-nonsense, Usopp's caution, Franky's bells and whistles, Brook's angles and lullabies, and Chopper's cuddly fur, it was Law she quieted into, the surgeon with a cloth draped over him, just in case—one hand now cupped just under her padded buttocks, holding her to him, the other balancing his book. And she slept. For a few borrowed minutes, while Nami was trying her damndest to have a shower and maybe get some shut-eye too.

Chopper trotted across the floor and Law held a finger up to his lips, annoyance crossing his eyes as the page of his book flipped back to one he'd read about three hours ago. The tanuki stared at him with reindeer eyes, tanuki gaze—what the hell ever in the animal kingdom he was—and Law let out a sigh, put the journal to the side.

Chopper jumped up to his lap and nestled, pushing his head against Law's stomach, pulling the journal across so they could both read it. Law adjusted the baby so she lay against him a little more comfortably, using both hands to rearrange and cradle. Pulling an arm loose, he found the page number, pointing it out to Chopper, and read over the younger doctor's hat and head as his hooves held the book open. Every now and then the baby wriggled and he shooshed and jiggled her as she pushed her head into him and slept.

There had been more than one festival night and Lammy always wanted to see the fireworks through to the end. She'd fall asleep on their blanket, crowds milling about, their mother and father enjoying a beer, the sky and their faces alight. As the crowds traipsed home, their dad lifted Lammy and carried her snoozing-self, her head slack-jawed over his back.

Law was always too tired to refuse his mother's hand and he slumped into her, shoes scuffing in the dust, as they walked from the riverbed to their house a few blocks away. The sensible slacks she wore, suitable for a picnic, rubbed against his face. She'd scold that he'd trip her up, but she tucked him into bed and gave him a peck on the brow later than night. He wiped it now and Chopper wondered why.

The baby breathed up and down, a set of bellows softly teasing a fire. Chopper's fur and pulse warmed him. Largha seals give birth on haul-outs made up of ice, their mothers sometimes delaying birth until the ice was thick enough. The males that partnered with them for the gestation were generally not the fathers, but remained close—more for reasons of copulation than protection of the pup. But they set up monogamous triads (once the pup was born) across the ice, with enough distance between other trios to distinguish each as a family unit. Once the baby was weaned, the adults mated, and left when the pup had lost the fluffy white fur that kept it cosy against the Arctic cold. A new family formed for the duration of the next pregnancy and birth.

The pup learnt how to socialise. Shy around humans, the Largha seals enjoyed their own kind. The mother passed on the tactile and olfactory skills needed for hunting, fishing—surviving—all in the weeks before the pups grew strong and blubbery enough to dive. The mother and child connected with nose rubs and body warmth and calls to recognise each other on land, ice and water.

Out of breeding and into moulting season, huge groups gathered together on the ice floes. No wonder he had a sweet spot for Bepo, his fur, his proximity. Never mind the teeth.

Nami, showered and wreathed with the harried expression of the sleep-deprived, walked into the room. Law hoped she'd been able to grab twenty minutes of shut-eye, but there was so much to do, so little time, and what was energy but something that helped you push through the lowest ebb?

The Hearts crew had set up rosters and check-ins when Ikkaku had knocked on Law's door more than once, overwhelmed with postpartum blues. He probably wasn't the best person for the job, but he researched and tried. What was specialisation without knowledge of the general stresses and troubles that pulled the rugs out from under, that frayed edges? He was sure the Strawhats had similar systems in place.

Law easily gave the baby up as Nami took her from his arms, clucking quietly, holding her in the crook of her arm. Both sets of eyes on the sleeping bundle before briefly looking at the other.

"Thanks, Law."

He lifted a hand in recognition, hardly glancing at her as Chopper turned the page. He ran a hand across his shoulder to pass the towel, taking in the warmth still pressed into his skin.

"Anytime." And she knew he meant it, understanding that Luffy's clatter, and the boys racing around the house, and Franky's shenanigans, and Zoro and Sanji's fighting, set his teeth on edge in a way the most hurricane-alert wail from her daughter didn't. Or he clenched his jaw and proceeded regardless, whereas he'd happily separate the boys from their appendages without second thought. Anything for a moment's quiet.

As a doctor, maybe he understood the intensities of distress in a way that even she had trouble with. And god knows, there were times when she really had to bite down to get through the twenty-four-seven need to be there for her daughter.

Bellemere. They'd all lost someone. If only her tough-as-nails mother could see her now as she struggled and did her best. She took the towel from Law and her hand stayed on his shoulder just a bit longer. The captain shrunk into himself a little with the removal of her daughter, as if battling an urge to grasp onto her and not let go. Who had he lost?

"Anytime, Law. I'll put her down now, but whenever she's screaming like a banshee you have permission to take her far from earshot." So long as it wasn't really, really serious. She smiled. Tired.

A house lit with dinner conversations and arguments about doing the dishes and bath-times warmed the edges of his eyes. No, he hadn't joined their crew, had never become what Luffy considered nakama, because he had his own family. Deep within the chambers of the Polar Tang, bandages were wrapped and unwrapped and applied to foolish crew members, chastisement was doled out, Mink garchu given and received, and the sweaty, stinky, noisy, squalling echoes of being alive was breathed in and savoured. Even if you had to flap the back of your ear to dislodge the ringing.

Law's nose twitched, Nami peered down, hopeful, but the medical journal was intriguing. "Let her sleep," he said without looking up, "I'll help you with the mess when she wakes." Which, true, would be about thirty minutes from now. She'd hold him to it. Who wouldn't? Nami was breastfeeding and the waste wasn't such a great irritant for a short period of time, but anyone willing to not only hold a baby, but change its nappy made her think of giving _them_ beri.

Bodily functions of living creatures created a sense of relief for Law. Those of the dead signified their passing and his own escape and worry that he'd be the next to perish. Give him screaming babies over deathly silence any day. The first could only change and grow and flower—whether into a noxious weed or a vine of sustenance was yet to be known. The second too, the dead changed, but in different ways, into different forms.

Memories, identity, experience—life extinguished, forgotten, destroyed. There were no markers to mourn the dead you'd loved when they were living. An unfortunate but common side effect of genocide and murder committed a long way from home. So he honoured the living while they breathed. Respected life, noted it, observed.

Cora, Lammy, his mother and father—their voices intermingled in a scream that would bank up his patience to the hilt if he lived with it day in day out. But the cry was joy in its own way, even as he tensed and brought awareness to the impulse to snap out shitty orders to stop the noise in the most devastating and harmful way possible. The people of Flevance should never have called out their sickness and asked for assistance. In the short-term, it was easier to crush problems than ease them. He'd lost loved ones but had never lost life.

* * *

**A/N**: Lord, I'm going to have to sanctify my version of Law soon, aren't I? Lol. But I don't think we really know how he would react to kids. Oda does have characters look after kids in lots of instances. I know in Punk Hazard he didn't have any attachment to the kids, but he didn't hurt them, and did save them, and I feel he was critical toward Caesar about his experiments with some of their dialogue. He was young, and Bepo a lot younger, when he met Shachi and Penguin on Swallow Island. Thanks for reading. All feedback is welcome.


	7. Doctors - MarLaw, Tashigi, birthdays

**Doctors checking out doctors**

* * *

At the annual convention of doctors checking out doctors checking out research and reining egos in—or letting their freak flag fly (Hogback and Walpol were both there, after all)—Marco and Law stole away. Without their crews. Between battles.

Law really needed a break from all that rescuing of Strawhat, and meticulous planning. Marco also really needed a break from all that rescuing of Strawhat. And grieving. And from surges of vengeance-driven urges. And from...grieving.

It was as regular a companion as Kikoku resting against the Heart captain's shoulder for them both.

It wasn't that Law didn't want his crew with him at the conference. They were medicos as well in their own manner and styles. Pamphlets on disinfection, methods of stitching, demonstrations on bone setting—there was bound to be something for them, but the Heart-communal kitty just didn't stretch that far. Law would pass on techniques and useful information.

But the Hearts needed R&R too, so while he wandered rooms inspecting mortars and powders and herbs and pestles, and listened to how science could intertwine with Devil fruits, or not, Bepo and Shachi and Penguin and Ikkaku—and co.—roamed the island, licking ice creams, flicking through magazines, stocking up on supplies.

It was harder for Marco's shipmates to partake. His crew, Whitebeard's crew, crews—assembled and disassembled alike—were still sorting themselves out after the Payback War. A huge task. And they weren't a floating surgery. As the head doctor for so many, new techniques would help him and them when they eventually regrouped, if they ever did. He'd taken time out. A welcome respite. He'd take the skills with him when he returned to Pop's island.

Law glanced down at the registration package. Belladonna brushed past. A tilt of her chin acknowledged that she might remember him from Amazon Lily.

Elder Nyon ushered her through, steadfastly ignoring the surgeon. He cast an eye around for Boa Hancock but the hall remained devoid of beauty and of men turned to stone. Law viewed the envelope in his hands. _Marco the Phoenix_, age: 44. A tic spasmed along his cheek.

He looked up, sighed, no big deal. Doctors relied on their staff for organisation. It was to be expected that a conference full of practitioners and specialists had its own type of chaos. Mix-ups.

Law had studied all the devil fruits, of course. He studied everything. Forty-four? Must be something in those flames of restoration that kept that zoan fresh. Then again, Marco's cohort, Doflamingo, Shanks, Crocodile—all those guys who'd been terrorising the seas since forever—maintained their youth. He knew Doflamingo was intent on keeping his boyish good looks forever.

Even so, a smattering of wrinkles and a few threads of grey hair ticked a few boxes for Law. He'd had a tryst with the wrong kind of cigar-chomping marine on occasion. _Pfft_. As if there was a right kind. Cora. That was it.

Average age of death was 121 years for humans across all the lines. So he guessed they were still all babies—Hero Garp just now a little past middle age at seventy-seven if those marine puff pieces were to be believed.

An envelope tapped his elbow, and Law made sure not to jump. He moved toward the source. The man himself. Law had to look up. He leant back against the wall. Not as annoyingly tall as that Dressrosan bastard, or that redhead yabber-mouth, Eustass-ya, but he still had to lift his gaze.

Nothing gaudy about him. Impractical, perhaps. Like Strawhat. Those sandals. As if heading out to the beach rather than being on an island just a few ocean trenches away from a winter clime.

"This is yours." Law didn't know what Marco referred to, but nodded as the Whitebeard pulled the paper clear from where it tapped his skin. Marco peered down and read, "Twenty-five, eh? Child genii order of the day where you're from, Surgeon of Death?"

Law looked him over. Supple. Compact. Muscled. Fit. Lethal. He shook his head, eyes shadowed under his hat's brim.

"The doctor on Mugiwara's crew's even younger, I hear." Still a child. Law lifted his face, features more apparent. He turned Marco's envelope. "Your powers grant you perpetual youth, Marco the Phoenix? Forty-four?"

Marco leant against the wall next to Law, legs sticking into the corridor, ankles crossed. Law moved minimally to make room.

"Hah, don't make me blush. Silver eyes and silver tongue?" He sneaked a peek at the North Blue rookie. Or were there splinters of gold in them? "Wonder what Doctor Kureha's registration says? And isn't it natural to look young at forty-four?"

"She'll let you know." She'd regaled Law with her age, youth, and ability to drink anyone under the table, when she'd freed a bottle of rum from his backpack. For medicinal purposes, she'd winked.

The two pirates swapped the papers and checked the date of the convention—October 7—and scanned each other's information, gaze lighting on muscled forearms, and hands that had seen as many fights as forceps, before returning to their own forms.

Old enough to be his very young father, Law thought. But time was borrowed and opportunities were for the seizing.

"Oh, by the way—" Maybe Marco wanted to be clear. No accusations of gaslighting later. But, hell, a pirate was a pirate, even when he was a doctor.

"I'm not really—" Maybe Law just wanted to mention the number to bring the gap a little closer. That magenta sat well. The shin decoration intrigued him.

Both stared at the other for a beat. Law looked away first, Kikoku relaxed, but not absent. "The crew makes such a fuss. It's good to have a quiet day," he mumbled, one hand checking through his pockets, the other holding the conference information to his chest, the sword tucked into the crook of his arm.

"I forget every year. Kinda like it's great when people do nice things on run-of-the-mill days; shouldn't have to be a special day to be nice to someone, y'know?" Marco spoke to his feet stretched out in front.

Marco was just thinking aloud?

"Never celebrate it."

Wait, Law was talking about…? Was he even talking to him?

"Sometimes I do," Marco said. "Birthday's October 5th. Wanna drink? Think I'm forty-five now."

Law eyed him once more. Marco wasn't even trying, and his resting strength blasted heat into the brick wall. "Twenty-six." Law flexed his hands, the back tattoos black against the small blue dome rising below them. "Never thought I'd make it this far."

Call and response. A blue flame rested across the back of Marco's hand like a rat waiting to be petted. It drew Law's attention. Pretty. "October 6," he said. "I don't tell everyone." Hardly anyone.

Ah, not too much cradle-snatching then, Marco thought, especially considering Law's peat-smoked, tannin-charred, whiskey barrel tone. Had passed maturation and eased into a savoured mouthful.

Doc Q stumbled by, almost tripping over Law's boots. Long legs. Right in the hall way. Marco tensed. Law remained slouched against the wall, but slid his hand along the nodachi's scabbard. Marco let out a breath. Not yet. Law relaxed.

The Heart captain wasn't soused like that. Doc Q was well on the way to putrefaction. Bleary-eyed, he glared at them, but sloshed away without recognising them.

Not here. Not these few days at this time of the year. Marco wasn't here on that kind of business. He straightened and turned his back to the passing attendees, and—arms crossed, envelope held loosely between the tips of his fingers—focused on the surgeon. Luffy's rescuer. Already a few lives lived and lost under that ink for sure.

Maybe it'd be conversation and a drink. Maybe a drink and a bit more. But, any sensible interaction away from Walpol and Hogback's posturing was a blessing. Kureha would drink them under the table, so best to avoid her too, and she'd hang out with Crocus anyway. Marco couldn't handle seeing Doc Q again today.

* * *

Twenty-three and one day today. Yesterday, twenty-three. Tashigi pushed the door to the bar open. No great swords were crafted on her birthday. Not that it mattered. Great swords were timeless. To her the date was a muscle spasm. You hardly thought about its purpose until it burped in public.

A drink wouldn't hurt though. A drink for her birthday. And she'd got promoted. That was worth a drink. Just one. Not too much. Her birthday. Meh. A captain. Yeah!

At the bar she ordered a hot coffee. It was her favourite anything, and it was for her belated birthday. A thimbleful of hazelnut liqueur was set beside it. Sipping without thinking, she drank half down. Smooth.

"It's for the coffee," the barkeep said.

"I didn't order it." She returned it to the counter with a quick thump. Her glasses steamed up, so she placed them next to the glass.

"Gentlemen at the side table." He jerked his head their way. "Bought a little of something for everyone in the tavern." There was one drunk passed out on the counter, the marine, and the two pirates themselves, cosied away in a corner. Awfully generous of them.

"Oh, delicious." Tashigi drank the rest. Shouldn't, but, so good. She wiped her glasses, replaced them, surveyed the bar.

A flash of blue like the colour rumoured to have illuminated port towns from North Blue to the Grand Line lit up. A fiery crackle of flames—in sight, they made no sound—brought Marineford screaming into the pub.

The shades subsided and one of the _gentlemen_, the one wearing some kind of spotted hat, spoke and had the blond laughing. They lifted glasses, a tumbler and a pint, and—

"Happy birthday."

—tattoos.

Hand on Shigure, she stared at the Surgeon of Death as he met her scowl, and reached for that long sword. The blond peered over his shoulder. The First Division Commander. Anyone could walk up on them. Sitting ducks. Were they so arrogant, one thought he could sit with his back to the door?

She noticed the envelopes stamped with the conference's name. Or was it that they believed attending a doctors convention brought some kind of amnesty from attack and prosecution? Marco was a doctor?

She stood. Hadn't drawn her sword yet. "Birthday?"

Law sighed. He never told anyone. Every time he let his caution recede some marine charged in and fucked it all up.

"Room."

Marco put out his hand and pushed Law's down, and Law glowered. He better know what he was doing. A few drinks didn't make them best friends.

"You were at Marineford," Marco said, turning around fully.

Tashigi nodded.

"You fought well."

So had Marco. For a pirate. She couldn't admit it, even now, but she'd held out hope that the submarine that whisked Monkey D. Luffy away—the boy who'd saved the people of Alabasta—had escaped. Smoker slammed the paper with the photo of Strawhat ringing the Ox bell at Marineford on the desk for her to read, but had said no more.

If they were going to bring him in, let them do it fairly. Smoker had stormed outside, but she knew it was to hide the twinge of relief he couldn't disguise.

"Birthday?" That liqueur warmed her belly.

Law groaned and pulled his cap lower, but Marco nodded.

"His yesterday, mine the day before."

Tashigi made sure to remember. "Mine too. October six. I never tell anyone."

"Birthday gift?" Marco asked. Shot her his best rapscallion smile. Took in his sullen companion. Guessed Law didn't sweet talk his way out of too many situations. It was a gamble. Marines weren't employed for their sentimentality.

"My silence?"

"Don't chase us. Enjoy your drink. We'll scarper, as quiet and forgotten as the day we came into this earth." The day was forgotten. They sure as hell weren't.

Law tipped back his beer. If he was going to fight and not be arrested, he wanted to finish it first.

The barkeep tapped Tashigi's cooling coffee with a teaspoon. She glanced over.

"They're too strong. Really. Please don't break up my business."

The marines paid up but the red-tape took forever. Craftsmen were in short supply and everything took time. Whenever there was a bust-up he bled beri.

"We're here for the Doctors' convention. Healing, not harming," Marco said. He almost let her in on his devil fruit ability, but if they didn't know already, it was best to leave them in the dark.

Benign for how long? Tashigi, shrugged. Then again, birthdays. Celebration. She slipped back into her seat, tipped the new drink into the coffee and stirred it. Didn't even think to ask where the replacement had come from. She drank it slowly. She was twenty-three. A captain. Trafalgar Law and she were born on the same day.

Swords and birthdays abounded, that was the nature of things. Blades fell into the wrong hands and her mission was to rescue them. She couldn't deny pirates their wish to ignore or not even notice their dates of birth. Nor could she deny them a wish to celebrate in a nook of the room, in a bar on a hushed cobbled street, well away from the business of research, hidden from the sleek bustle of the city, far removed from duty-bound paths of reprisal.

She turned the shooter glass and the barkeep filled it without asking. The liqueur wasn't terribly strong, but neither was Tashigi. She felt almost brave enough to call up Hina, to ask her out for a drink, and to maybe even celebrate her promotion. She could let slip she'd had a birthday. Smoker-san? She smiled to herself. He'd scold her for being there. For making a fuss over nothing.

She didn't hear the door click shut. She drank her third without coffee, then twisted to the side of the bar. What had she seen? Pirates toasting one another, exchanging birthday greetings in well-modulated tones? Just an excuse to drink, she understood that. She lifted her glass to the empty chairs. "Happy birthday, pirate scum." They'd get them. All the fun was in the chase.

She pulled out her meito guide and didn't think there were any long swords mentioned, but it had an appendix, and the tassels and patterning of Trafalgar's weapon was unusual. She raised a finger and another drink appeared like magic. The owner was happy. The two had paid ahead and would cover the now-captain. In the past she'd forgotten to ask for the bill, and rushed in the day after with cash, all red cheeks and apologies. Not that she drank often.

Someday she'd meet that sword again, she knew it.

* * *

**A/N: ****Thanks** for reading. If you've read _Payback_, this might be the conference mentioned where Law and Marco first met, though it doesn't quite match the timeline. I'm probably off with my ages, because I've just read canon Payback was about a year after Marineford.

It might still work with the ages I've used. We don't know when Law became a shichibukai, but for the purposes of this story, it's after he turns twenty-six. Being an October kid, it could still be in the time-skip. So, yeah, this is set just before they all turn their canon ages. I could take a year off those ages again to make it work if it doesn't. Also, very slight hints of SmoLaw in there.

Oh, I read in an SBS somewhere that the One Piece folk live to quite old ages. I can't remember exactly, and Doctor Kureha is still an exception!

Sorry it's late Marco, Law and Tashigi! I'll probably ease up writing in 2020, so I wanted to give them all a birthday greeting before then. Hope you enjoyed.

Would love to know your thoughts.


	8. Galoot of Galahs - MarLaw, Smoker

**A/N: **Just a short excerpt from a dark fic I have on AO3. Nothing dark about this excerpt though. Enjoy. Misery is one of Law and Marco's dogs from the _Repossession_ world. A galah is an Australian bird, and also slang for an idiot.

* * *

**a galoot of galahs**

* * *

"You wouldn't think a one-eyed creature could swim so well."

"Anything swims better than us."

Marco wrapped an arm around Law's waist and drew him near. Law, arms crossed, turned his head Marco's way for a beat. Steadied his footing. Looked back as Misery paddled out into the sea, picked up a stick thrown for her and swam back in. The salt water had to taste bad.

She loved the ocean. So did they of course, and they could stay afloat atop of it, in a vessel or under it in a submarine, but they couldn't physically submerge themselves and let go and trust the water and currents to carry them from one point to the next. They'd drown.

She ran up to them, shaking droplets all over their hairy legs—board shorts were the order of the day, even if they only went in as far as their knees. Frankie tried to convince them of the benefits of Speedos, but the two pirates were strangely modest. Plus, Robin might be lurking nearby and she had no mercy. Board shorts hid the fishing tackle a whole lot better.

They'd tether a floatie ring to the shore, or wear them themselves, tough guys be damned. The floaties looked particularly cute around Law's _badassmotherfucker_ bicep tatts, and Marco never failed to snort as his lover inflated them and slid them along his muscled arms.

They were like city kids—fluent in the ways of back-alley streets, but pale and jelly-legged on sand or sea. Even if they'd spent their lives on it. On it. Under it. Not in it.

Law's gruff wheeze of a laugh joined Marco's. It didn't stop them.

Once, Law chased down some bozos who'd taken off with their wallets, his wet boardies stuck to his thighs, yellow floaties (with Hearts' symbols) pumping up and down as he ran after them. Then he remembered his power and those kids never knew what hit them. Smoker had taken their statements and visited Law and Marco at home.

"Said a bunch of putzes..."

"Us?" Marco asked.

Smoker chomped on his cigar. That meant yes.

"Only two of us," the Phoenix added.

"Anyway, a galoot of galahs."

"Two, just two of us," Law corrected, "And the dog."

"I think they're using that word incorrectly," Marco murmured, turned his teacup. "Galoot. I think a galoot is a galah."

"Galoshes of galahs?" Law suggested.

"They're wellies. Wellington boots."

Marco looked at the window, all innocence, to avoid the devilment in Law's quick grin. He knew the Heart was imagining galoshes-wearing-galahs galooting in a downpour, like umbrella-twirling tap dancers.

Smoker glowered at them. "Some floatie-wearing hard-arse greenhorns dismembered them and dropped them on the foreshore."

"They lived to tell the tale?" Law asked, a tumbler mug of green tea in his hands disguising the curve of his lips. "They sound positively ghastly."

"Especially the floatie part." Marco bent under the table and scratched Misery's fur. She thumped her tail.

"The kids admitted they'd been trying to lift wallets."

"Do tell." Law and Marco had taken precautions and buried them in the sand while they paddled. Their possessions _should_ have been safe. Who'd they think they were messing with?

"And so they're not pressing charges."

"Huh."

"But just be careful, Law, about separating people from their bodies."

"Is it illegal?" He thought stealing wallets also wasn't high on the list of judiciary approval.

Smoker knew if Law used his power, subjects wouldn't be hurt.

"No, but it scares the fuck out of everyone."

There should be a law against it. Sent ripples of fear through the community. "If you two still wanna play pirates, do it on the wide open unchartered seas."

Recidivists. Not reformed in the slightest.

"Scares them even if we've got floaties on?" Law and Marco sent each other a glance, and had to look down at the table to stop a fit of unmanly giggles.

"We look pretty suburban." It pained Marco to say it, but it was true.

Smoker cracked a smile, quickly hidden by bitter coffee. One of the "victims" had taken a snap. Smoker almost expected the irate man bearing down upon them, yellow floaties prominent, to be wearing an Edwardian one-piece swimsuit, and to have a little jiggly beer belly.

"Well done," he growled, and ran his foot over Misery's hide, "Just how do you manage to threaten and protect while wearing floaties, of all the goddamned things?"

Marco looked at their tea-towel collection, at _Law's_ tea-towel collection. Smoker really had to ask? "One of Trafalgar's many skills."

"We've got a rubber ring, Smo-ya. It's cute. Got daisies on it. Nami gave it to us."

Marco stood and walked to the kitchen. "Charged us, Law. We had to pay her for the pleasure." He brought back a mandarin each for all. Sat and peeled his, looked over to Smoker. "Sure, big guy. Next time you want to join us, just ask. You don't have to arrest a bunch of losers to impress us."

* * *

Law, earnestly leant forward on a Bepo-shaped pool float. Marco mixed drinks at a poolside bar, and Smoker rolled his cigars on the edge of an ashtray set up on his daisy-patterned float. Both fruit-users' stacked arms were encased in floaties. Smoker's bore the Marines' symbol.

Misery ran up and down the side of the pool, and it was Tashigi's job to fetch either one of them out of the water when they tumbled in. All it took was one point needing emphasis, one grown man leaning too far. There went the cigars, Law's do. Thank goodness for the floaties. And Tashigi.

Turning circles, Misery barked, and Marco for the life of him was sure she was laughing.


	9. Late Morning Sun - ZoLaw

**Late Morning Sun**

* * *

A _legato*_ of sun masks the notes lightening Law's skin, one easy pitch smudging into another. Zoro's arm rests across the Heart captain's hip, his hand snaking under the cloth of his top, fingers resting on the clicks of Law's spine as he sleeps against him.

Tucked under Law's arms, it takes some effort to lift his face from where it's smushed into the must and musk of his chest. A circle of Zoro's own sleepy drool dampens the doctor's clothes, and his hair brushes his chin. The swordsman looks down at his own arm. Sun falls on the skin, his flesh merging with Law's.

One shade of light sings of return, shelter, connection, warmth. Transience. The earth spins on an axis, after all. And the other is a _glissando*_ of revulsion and panic. Historical. On occasion. Not from him. Even side glances are rare nowadays. Law—too confident, too inked. The world has changed. So many things forgotten.

Zoro softly presses the pads of his fingers against the lighter pigmentation just under that back tattoo. Law is, strangely enough, out to the world. No reaction. He hasn't slept the last few nights. Catching up now.

* * *

His voice an ebb of weariness, Law once described countries encircling his own, bearing down on it. Fear of contagion—and the greed of royals and profiteers—had bloodied the streets; his parents, his sister, his classmates and teacher, all eradicated. Rumours were fact. Inflammatory statements, justification. Government-endorsed. All in the cold North Blue.

* * *

Law exhales, and his breath and body over Zoro's are anything but cold. A very warm survivor, one of few. Who knew about Flevance anymore, anyway? Doflamingo and certain elite marines who keep secrets close?

Zoro drops his arm and tries to extract himself from Law's cocoon—his belly is pushed against one of Law's sturdy thighs, the other thigh looped over his own hip. Hemmed in. The guy's too tall, too limbed. He concentrates. Can cut steel if he needs to with barely a sound. Successful, he rolls from the sun-punctuated sheets into his own shadow, away from Law's resigned grumble.

* * *

Health had been the thirteen-year-old's priority once a chance of survival became apparent. Once his condition stabilised he concentrated on other things. Smoothing blemishes wasn't one of them. Brushing up and expanding medical knowledge was. There was so much catching up to do. So much learning to be done. Finding shelter. And keeping it all together and keeping things about him all together too, in one piece, that had been important. Some of those one pieces had been more valuable to him than others.

His hat.

Law's never lost it, but always could. Been knocked from his head and replaced more than once. Zoro's privy to that tumble of hair. Could stand for him to lose that hat some more. Though he wears it now. Sleep was such a sudden rush last night Law hadn't removed it. Understandable. Zoro's surprised more of the populous don't cover up. Not like everyone has a spiky mane of glorious green. Impoverished bastards.

Law had needed to replace the clothes he wore when he crept away from Flevance and, considering his mode of transport, quickly.

Zoro presses his nose into sheets in need of washing. They smell of Law's lived-in skin, of murmurings of future plans and plains to be traversed and held sacred. All lands were Law's lands once Cora freed him. Nothing held him back.

* * *

White on white, Flevance was steeped in snow during the winter months. It softened the earth, a quiet beauty. Summer brought fireworks and soldiers. Nothing muffled the blows or screams.

Neither Cora's abilities nor the snow that fell cushioned the tear of seven bullets hewing a path through sinew and bone. Cora had known he wasn't going to see this one through. Law, dependent only on sound, filled the spaces of the chest with cries. Contained spaces, he knew their contours too well.

Where Cora's silencing fruit stole protest from Law, burning buildings and bullets looking for a home smothered it—muffling the sound of Law's feet slapping against the pavements of Flevance—his cries. How he'd wished he could remove his heart, its thundering beat, as he hid below a cobbled bridge, waiting for soldiers to cross.

Into a landscape where a pin drop wouldn't go unnoticed, pirate cannons and government munitions allowed Law to let loose waves of grief. Cora exhaled one last time. Destruction was the obstruction needed for Law's dogged, messy, miserable escape. Unwitnessed, unheard.

* * *

Zoro glances again at the sun and Law's own pigmentation. The surgeon could've removed the marks at some point, he's sure, but most grow into their skins, not out of them. Law's testament to that, and to all who were not. The souls of the expired—cold, soft, fluttery things—stick to him. Excision has never been an option.

* * *

**A/N**: _legato_ is like a slur in music, where notes are played one after the other with no break.

_glissando_ is where the music sweeps or glides. The inspiration for this was from a wonderful piece of art on the KRABBGRABB tumblr. Check the art out, it's great. I don't h/c Law with vitiligo, but it ties in well to the picture.


	10. Lightness in the Dark - 01 Law, Aladine

**A/N**: A little bit of background. I'll be posting a few chapters of the lighter stuff from some of my longer works on AO3. In this AU, Luffy's the pirate king of a brand new world, but some of the old laws were never changed, and certain elements want to round up the ex-slaves and reintroduce slavery. That is not the focus of this piece, but just to give you some background. Luffy pardoned Doflamingo too.

* * *

**lightness in the dark pt 1**

* * *

"You don't get too scared of big ugly fellas."

Law and Jean Bart sat in the yard. Things were running smoothly. Jean Bart oversaw this safehouse, or the getting in of the staff, and worked in conjunction with the Strawhats and the Revolutionaries. Anyone who was down with the cause. He'd sail with the Hearts if they set out to sea. Same went for the Strawhats and key Revolutionaries and their respective crews. The Sun Pirates too.

Law sealed a rollie paper, swiping it over his tongue one way and then the other. He secured the contents, pushing down with a twig from the garden, held a flame and let the joint smoulder. He lifted the toke to his lips. "Nah, I don't." Inhaled.

He admired the massive Moreton Bay Fig tree. He loved the visible roots folded like the pleats of a fan. It was too cold for them in the North Blue and they were too big for the greenhouses in the botanical gardens, but he'd read about them and always imagined slipping in between them like a rabbit tumbling into the underworld.

"You didn't freak out when you approached me on Sabaody," Jean Bart said, elbows on his knees, fists under his chin.

Law's arm dangled behind his chair frame. They'd dragged a few seats out from the kitchen. Jean Bart took up _all _of the bench seat.

"It didn't seem to me that the monsters were in chains."

"Huh." Jean Bart refused the joint—he'd crush it just by holding it—and so Law settled back into his chair, lifted it to his mouth again. "Couldn't get a girl to look twice at me in my homeland."

Law exhaled, and looked over the fierce face and high inked forehead, at the scar running diagonally from the base of one hooked tattoo to just above Jean Bart's eye. He had to crane his neck. He was about double Bepo's size, and Law didn't come up to Bepo's shoulder.

"A great strapping lad like you?"

Jean Bart hunkered down and spied Sanji exiting the back of the house.

"Unbelievable, right?"

"I wasn't always a Greek Adonis either," Law smiled, drew in his feet as Blackleg passed.

Sanji placed a large cup of amazake in Jean Bart's hands. The cook wondered if he was a giant. A bit on the small side. He didn't drink much booze, but enjoyed the sweet, very low alcohol, drink, made from the lees of sake, the dregs after the fermentation process—sake-kasu.

Ronin—the samurai without a master, destined to wander until they found one—used to make it in the summer in the old days, though it was a winter drink now, but screw that, Sanji was bringing old-fashioned back. He could just imagine Zoro slaving over a huge pot of the mixture, selling it for a beri or two, spending his earnings on something stronger.

Their benefactor from the north had brought some paste down with him, at Sanji's request, when he'd dropped off the bottles of sake. The weather _was _a bit warm for it, but it was a comfort drink, thick like a watery porridge. Perfect for easing anxiety in these troubled times, though it looked like Law had his own methods. They used to drink it to keep cool. One of those counterintuitive things. It was so valuable to health that the government set the price and kept it low.

Sanji lifted the toke from Law's hand and took a drag. Gave it back to the surgeon. Law didn't blink. Zoro would've been at his throat.

"That's Cavendish, isn't it? Adonis? Blond and all. The ladies prefer blonds."

"Just as well," Law said, "Though so do I." He eyed Sanji with a wicked glint.

"You're exclusive, shithead."

Jean Bart murmured thanks before downing the drink.

Law sighed. "I know. Franky got jealous with me seeing other men."

Sanji lit up one of his own cigarettes, hands hiding his quick smile, and pulled up a folding chair near Law. Sat.

"He's not blond."

Law didn't know how he'd ended up with a blond. He was more a seek-your-own-type kind of a guy, but then, Marco and he had similar builds, even if he could look down at him when he put his mind to it. He'd just smother him in tea-towels, or another of his very particular hobbies, and that levelled the playing field.

Smoker wasn't dark. Nor was Penguin. Law was a traitor to his own self. Maybe he'd made up for it with Luffy, short thing that he was.

"S'pose blond's a coverall. Any colour that's not brown or black."

"You've got blond streaks, then." Sanji eyed the hints of blue in Law's hair.

"Huh, guess I do," Law grinned.

"And you just lumped me with Marimo."

"Yeah," Law relit the joint. "Sorry 'bout that." But also with Marco and Law himself, blue streaks taken into account.

* * *

The garden was quiet and chill. The safehouse was always busy. Folks arriving, leaving, being treated. Volunteers dealing with cleaning, catering, laundry. Whenever Law visited he relaxed in the yard for a while, and those who wanted to talk to him knew where to find him.

The canopy of branches and leaves and the walls around the property both calmed him and left him feeling a little hemmed in, without clear vision. But he'd scoped the exits, the weaknesses in the walls, the objects he could use in combat or escape.

The kitchen door banged against the outside wall. Law finished the joint, turned. Marco and Aladine stepped onto the lawn—Marco's head bent in conversation, finger and thumb straightening his glasses. That light blue shirt suited him. Aladine carried two six packs of island brew.

Marco returned Law's grin and hand lifted in greeting. The Heart turned back to Sanji and Jean Bart, lay his head back, and watched the evening stars dot the sky through the gaps of the tree's branches.

Law had needed to make more split decisions in his life than he could count. Whether to mourn his parents or save his own life. To take Lammy with him or put her somewhere safe. To join the Donquixote Family or remain alone.

He'd probably thought about that one too long.

Whether to take down Doflamingo.

Yeah, he'd brooded on that one. Maybe planning was the thing that fucked him up.

But in conflict a fighter had to act. In safe times it was hard to let go of that response, to know who to trust or not. He trained himself. The calm before the New World, taking it easy as the submarine floated on the surface, bobbing with the current or lack of it.

Aladine shook out a huge rug and tossed down a few red cylindrical and square cushions trimmed with gold brocade. He lowered himself to the ground. The crickets were firing away in the tree. Marco pulled the chair nearest to Law closer and clamped his thigh, Law sending him a glance of recognition, before Marco reached across for the beers, the bottle opener, and popped the lid off four. Passed them around.

Law thanked him. He was still strung out from the attacks, the targeting of the Hearts and other ex-slaves. He knew Marco wasn't fully attuned to all that was good with the world either. You pushed through, but he felt more at ease with the Phoenix there. Both paved their own path, but didn't mind the tread of the other on the stones, welcomed it.

The air was brittle, like the lace of an egg frying in a pan—but fear was its own captivity.

* * *

Ikkaku, Nami, and Bepo wandered out. All three wearing jinbei, the loosely woven cotton shorts and light short-sleeved jacket, tied so neatly from the inside and then out, to beat the season's heat. The two navigators traded seafaring stories and tips. Nami's jinbei was patterned with stag beetles, and Ikkaku's and Bepo's with the Heart emblem, of course. Though Bepo's had a few fish swimming about the hem, and Ikkaku's swirled with stylised sea urchins. She must have borrowed Uni's gear.

Luckily they'd brought their own beer, though it looked as if Nami might grab the remaining few bottles Aladine had purchased and charge them for it. Law grinned around the mouth of his drink as they kicked off their flipflops and shoes and settled into the cushions.

Sanji leant Law's way, and Law was surprised he trusted him with it, but he shambled out the portable gas cooker—gently, gently does it, at his request. Sanji returned to the kitchen and exited with the amazake, bubbling in the huge silver saucepan. He placed the mixture on the burner, on the blanket, and set the heat to a low flame. Removed his oven mitts and doled out cups, large and small, of the drink.

Sanji, Marco and Jean-Bart argued about which region of the seas had the fiercest amazake baba, or amazake hag. The rumours were wild in Flevance that she was a demon who'd brought sickness to the town. People made offerings of the sweet drink to her statue at shrines and temples, or pinned cedar leaves to their house entrances so she wouldn't come shuffling by at night, knocking on their doors for the drink, and then spreading the plague whether her thirst was sated or not.

Superstitions. Law practiced his fruit. Miniscule. Lighting up small domes of his Room at the tips of his fingers, and twisting them between his digits like fireflies flitting through the trees. Bepo looked on, engrossed. It was his favourite party trick. Everyone else was deep in low murmured conversations of exploits of mythology and idiocy. Law angled back with a smile, catching Bepo's eye for a second…and Aladine's.

The merman was rapt. Law sat up, a little surprised. Because his sleight of hand had been noticed, and at the glee bathing his face.

"Can you do bubbles?" Aladine's voice rumbled across the yard like the slap of the sea against a boat's hull.

Law almost powered down but there was something in the man's features. His silver hoops were dull against his face in the diminishing light, but Aladine's face glowed.

"On Fishman Island we dreamed of the fresh air and the pretty bubbles of Sabaody. Everyone's childhood dream was to ride the Ferris wheel."

And they could. Now they could. Except if Doflamingo and his cronies got their way.

"Did you go to fairs, Law, when you were young?" Nami asked. On Sabaody? Somewhere else? She and Ikkaku clinked drinks in summer cheer, but looked on, waiting for an answer.

"Festivals, yeah." He shut down his fruit. Could he make perfect, separate, spheres to float in the yard? He'd need to be careful that none flew too high. Were they still under his control if he sent the Room away from him?

The number of times he'd refused to go to festivals with Lammy. He'd been such a serious child. He peeked at Aladine again from under the brim of his hat, and Bepo, Nami and Ikkaku all seemed eager to see him try. Nami's red hair. Damn it.

Marco—still in conversation with Sanji about the witches of the Grand Line, the back of his head to Law—rested his hand on Law's knee again. A clasp, a squeeze, then lifted it. Whatever you choose is okay. It would hardly drain him.

Law whispered the action under his breath, and the blue appeared between his fingers like webbing. Even that was enough to make Aladine cackle. Law meshed his hands together—Kikoku pushing across his shoulder—put his lips to the intertwined fist and blew, pretending that his exhalation could launch bubbles.

"Captain!"

Bepo. He squirmed like Chopper doing his weirdly happy rejection dance. Law lowered his eyes. Nami's red hair, and his crew, dammit.

He released the edges of his palms the furthest away from him, curtains drifting open and closed in the breeze. Blue domes, circles, bubbles, suds, surrounded them like phosphorescence in the ocean. He looked up at Jean Bart. Had he wanted to ride the Ferris wheel too?

Even Nami was quiet, apart from an exclamation or two. The domes floated as high as Jean Bart, and there was Lammy and her insistence on watching all of the fireworks all the way through, though she always fell asleep on the blanket. Their father carrying her home. Law trudging behind, too tired to refuse his mother's hand.

Aladine's laugh was tuneful. Law hadn't heard it often. The bubbles drifted around him and rose as high as…

As high as. No. He could control his power for great distances, that wasn't the point, and manipulated all manner of things in one sphere, but dispersed and carbonated like this? He wasn't sure. He pulled the rooms in quickly. It hadn't affected his stamina but he shouldn't be too frivolous.

"Tora-o!"

"Captain!"

A questioning look from Aladine, but Jean Bart, Sanji and Marco leant forward, Sanji extinguishing the fire of the burner. Law stood, unsheathed Kikoku and opened a wider single Room.

A slow, steady, clap echoed from the higher branches of the fig tree.

"Very touching, Law. Nice to see the adult has not yet completely abandoned the child."

* * *

**A/N: **In this AU/World, Law has quite a few exes, and remains friends with them all: Penguin from way back, Smoker, and Luffy (not all at once). His hobbies are also so hobby-tex kinda innocuous that they appear esoteric in the cutthroat pirate world, other than collecting body parts and preserving them in formaldehyde. That one's either bloodthirsty or normal.

Thanks for reading.

If you liked it, comments feed a fan-fiction writer's soul. Truly. Thanks again. :-)


	11. Lightness in the Dark - 02 MarLaw FroBin

**A/N: **So if anyone intends to read A few drops of holy cuckold, this will spoil the good ending for you, so stop here. And fair warning, do not read if you don't like dark fics. For everyone else, this two-shot doesn't really have flow in terms of story, so maybe view it as a showcase for Law's abilities.

* * *

**Lightness in the Dark - 02**

* * *

A bouquet of light glinted off glass, funnelled and coned across the water like sprays of baby breath, and lit the corner of a dull red mesh barrier, the rest shadowed under a bridge. The inhabitants of the Ferris wheel car shielded their eyes from the glare, then dropped their hands from their faces as the ride rose higher.

Squashed between Robin and Franky on one side of the carriage, the demon child held Law in place. He didn't mind being their favoured companion, but it got a bit much at times. A flash of blue and a ticket stub floated to the hard plastic seat as he shambled himself to the opposite bench, next to Marco. Leant into him. Crushing him. The carriage swayed a little. Franky frowned. Should be sturdier than that

"Aren't you meant to be the master of that damn fruit?" Marco asked.

"There, there," Law laughed, planting a quick peck on his cheek, "I am." Marco placed a palm over the embrace and looked out the window, a small smile creeping across his face like a tongue-tied sixteen-year-old. Damn, must be back in the good books.

Law brushed his head against his clamped arm and shoulder, a pup with no notion of personal space. Marco smiled more broadly, lifted his arm, and Law tucked in, warm breast to heart.

Then shambled Marco out.

And had the best window seat.

The view of the ocean. Marco next to him. The blond leant his head back against the metal and groaned.

"Hafta be so flashy about everything?"

Law was intent on peering out the window, but he quickly glanced at Marco. "Like this?" he asked, and flashed his best smile, finger pointing at his pearly whites.

Arms crossed, but head turned, Marco allowed himself a quick grin. "My eyes are smiling."

"Are they, now?" Law thought they were rolling with well-deserved exasperation.

"Positively dancing, bro," Franky said in his best inside-a-Ferris-wheel-car voice. Law and Marco winced. Robin remained calm. Probably something to do with knowing she could break any of their necks at any time.

"Star-aligned lovers, indeed," she said. They could be cute. Not as cute as Ryunosuke, the poorly drawn dragon left to fade out on the back of the Elephant island, Zou, but in their own scrappy way.

"You get the seaside view because—?" Marco spread his arms across the back of the seat. The sky was fluffy goodness and recesses of blue. A news coo flew past on its way to spreading some form of government soft sell, despite tightened media regulations.

"Aw, c'mon man."

Marco stared across at Franky.

"It's still a novelty to him. All that time spent in the submarine. Never gets to see the ocean from this angle. He's like a cute little cockroach crawling into the sun. And let's face it, he can't fly like you. And the Polar Tang—solid as she is—just don't have anything like the Coup de burst."

"Humour him," Robin said, "It's best."

Marco's gaze flicked to Robin then back to Franky.

"Law, not the cyborg. Or both, best to humour both."

Law shot her a look, over his shoulder. _Ohara_. Her serenity could teach the Madonna a thing or two. _Flevance _her gaze shot back.

"Everyone's got a poor cousin, I guess," Marco sighed. Law knelt on the bench and leant halfway out the window like a primary school sprog who had yet to figure out the laws of gravity.

"With manners to match." Franky was solemn. He was so tall Robin didn't even have to adjust as he put his palms on the back of his head, elbows out. "Yeah, I know bro, it's a tough row to hoe."

There were worse things than Franky's rhymes. Humour him. Robin was wise. Marco lifted his chin in acknowledgement of the all a-o-kay-ness. The shipwright was spot on. He turned to the shaggy tattooed mop to his right.

Law was still half out the large valance window like a three-year old on a sugar high. Three-year-olds probably rode these cars all the time. Why were the windows openable?

Marco tugged at the back of his trousers. Hooked a thumb under one of his belt loops, the leather of Law's belt soft against his skin.

"That's why we had him between us."

"If it's not hyperactivity it's Thanatos."

Law shot a look back at Robin again, shook his head.

She calmly stared him down. Gallows humour helped them both avoid the gibbet, for sure, but she knew there were times when the noose had held more attraction for him than reality. She sent a hand to join Marco's in making sure he didn't pitch out too far. Who'd he think he was? Luffy?

She scratched a mole just above his lumbar, and he twitched.

"Thanatos?" Franky asked.

Law flopped back into the car, Marco quickly pulling his hand away from behind him before it hit the seat, Robin's appendage disappearing. "Death wish," Law answered. "Nah," he shook his head and cupped his hands. "For others perhaps." Yeah, he had a death wish for a few people. Had never quite outgrown that phase.

He drew up a room like peering into a crystal ball and Franky looked a bit panicked. Law about to demonstrate the ink on his fingers wasn't just for show? Always wondered what had stopped the Heart captain from getting a little prison scratch teardrop. He'd certainly killed a few men.

"Steady, bro. Wasn't me who said you were about to top yourself."

Law looked over the blue. It refracted onto his face with an eerie glow, and the shadowed hatching from his cap and concentration made him more maniac than medicine man.

"She can break your neck, you know?" Franky knew he could always rely on Robin if he was in a fix.

Law nodded. He blew across his hands, and manipulated his fingers. Franky stiffened, but Law had never purposefully hurt him, so why start now? But the air charged differently when he used his devil's fruit, so instinctive wariness just meant he was ready for action, not that he had to act. Law was fast, though.

The blue bubbles Law sent into the carriage appeared to float across the air from his breath alone. An illusion. They drifted around Marco and the others like hothouse butterflies. Marco'd do anything to see that smile more often.

Law directed his finger a few times, a train engineer checking a crossing, and the blue left the window, floated across the sky, and entered the cars above and below them.

"Captain!"

Marco moved closer as Bepo's delighted voice wended its way up to them. Law didn't look down. Marco followed his gaze to the car above them. Aladine, bewitched, had a larger window open, and tried to catch and pop the small bubbles, the miniature Rooms, as they crossed his vision. Law flicked his pinky each time to make sure they dissipated, as if he had. Jean Bart at the foot of the Ferris Wheel lifted his head at the rumble of laughter.

Aladine's smile—sea spray on skin after being landbound—was almost as good as Law's. Marco sat back into the carriage, and Law sent a swarm of blue into the car above. Sabo's top hat, Koala's cap, both blonds joined Aladine, and peered below. Through the clear curved roof, Franky kept an eye on the grips holding the gondala above.

The three withdrew into the car. Sabo had set sail, to navigate his small boat across the bay into the larger seas when he was barely ten, and a tenryubito had fired at him, fired at the boat, sunk it, and left him to die in the ensuing fire.

He wasn't sure he understood the simple pleasure Koala and Aladine had in just following the circles across the air in front of them like cats tracking string, but it was connected to captivity, and from the time when the only roles Fishmen and mermen were deemed fit to fill (by humans) was that of slaves. If not for Fisher Tiger and his crew, Aladine included, Koala wouldn't have rebuilt herself. Even the smallest pleasures were off limits when she belonged to others.

One bubble expanded, grew larger, filled the carriage and, oh fuck. Sabo really didn't like having his head cut off. Koala sat back in the seat—laughing—as Sabo griped in her lap. He was so much easier to handle this way. She stuck a thumb out the window to thank Law, then pulled on Sabo's ears. Sputtering anger suited him. His indignant headless torso flailed next to her.

Ping pong ball-sized rooms drifted to where Jean Bart stood with the members of the crew who had no interest in riding the Ferris Wheel. Or were just too tall. Tony Tony Chopper sat on his shoulder, and they both ate fairy floss*.

The quiet, fierce helmsman lifted a curious hand, almost unconsciously, and absorbed the blue. This was one of Captain's favourite tricks, but he usually created them to pull Bepo out of a funk. The bubbles in Sabaoday confirmed how much Jean Bart hadn't belonged, how few rights he had. Anyone could enjoy these.

Chopper, in so much wide-mouthed wonder, forgot all about his treat.

A bird swooped in and took off with it. Jean Bart—eyes set on the flickering blue—automatically handed the small doctor his own before before he got too upset. It was soft, and fluffy, and sticky and melted on his tongue. Chopper didn't protest.

When Luffy—zooming up to the Hearts, and Chopper, the rest of the crew in tow—tried to eat the bubbles Law knew it was time to draw them back in. Their uneven weights could tip the carriages slightly, but Luffy's strength could bring the whole structure down. Anyway, the allotted number of revolutions was almost up. Fittingly, the ride was named the emancipation wheel.

"Don't think you're off the hook, Trafalgar!" echoed down from the car above as Sabo pulled his head tightly onto his body. It was bad enough that Aladine and Koala shuddered with giggles, but Franky, Robin and Marco cracking up contributed to the festival air as well. Law, smarmy bastard, probably just sat there with that cat-that-got-the-cream face.

Koala held his hand though, and straightened his top hat, and placed a kiss on his jaw. "They were pretty. Not to be destroyed."

He looked down at her. And over at Aladine. "But I didn't touch them."

"She's come a long way, Sabo," the merman said. He actually had tried to burst them.

"No-one likes being the butt of a joke." Koala, pushed Sabo's hair back, and he nodded, straightening out his gloves. "He'd never choose anyone who couldn't take it."

A stray bubble moved across the car, then disappeared without a trace.

"It's because you're strong."

Sabo cracked his knuckles. Nodded. "Yeah. Guess so. I've been through worse."

And hadn't he, and hadn't they all.

* * *

**A/N:** *Cotton Candy is called Fairy Floss in Australia (and Candy Floss in the UK). And I just found out that it was originally called Fairy Floss. Interesting. Of course, "Fairy Floss Chopper" doesn't work at all, but oh well.

Thanks for reading. I know the two chapters are not really a story like this, but I hope that those who read enjoyed. There is a full on fight scene that follows the bbq scene in the last chapter, and I could look at a way of including that, but it would have to be edited quite a bit, because there's a fair amount of smack talk in it.

As it stands, I hope you all enjoyed Law's bubbles as much as Aladine did.


	12. Domestic Blindness - MarLaw, ZoLu

**Domestic Blindness**

* * *

Luffy was always heard before seen. Law didn't even lift his head—just licked his thumb, turned the page, then rested the same hand on Marco's hair. The Phoenix slept beside him, hair and pillow spilling onto Law's lap. Long shift at the bar the night before. Law had left early. He'd check over those light bruises dotting the underside of his forearm later. Probably hit it against the counter when setting up the keg.

Even Mercury wasn't fazed by the pirate king, though that depended on her mood. Sometimes she was as much a handful as Luffy. Definitely preferred him over Law most days. Today she tucked her head under her haunch and snuggled down. It was a coolish afternoon, a dip in the usual tropical weather.

Pekopeko, Zoro and Luffy's dog, yapped in the yard. Zoro always a few forgotten minutes behind Luffy.

There went the bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter. They'd learnt after the first time to buy a cheap replacement from the clearance stores after one of Marco's heirlooms shattered into a thousand pieces.

"_Shwo_wry, shwowry…"

A crash of ceramics on the floor, but no splosh of apples, bananas or oranges. Luffy must've hoovered them up.

Did he even know they were home? Law guessed so. The back door was open. But he might've come for the food. It wouldn't be the first time.

Law, still reading, still holding his book, raised an elbow away from his body. The current chapter was enthralling. His clinic was homey, run down, and dealt with the minutiae of life rather than the congestion of a big city surgery, but he liked to know what was going on with new developments. Had to keep up.

Luffy thumped down the corridor and stopped by the doorway with enough force to pick up splinters. The sliding glass at the back of the house clacked across its runners. Zoro had found his way in. The excited scatter of their small white dog and a volley of yips stirred Mercury.

Luffy dove under Law's arm, up against his torso, hair almost under the Heart's armpit, mouth stained with orange. Law's body shunted slightly then resettled. He turned the page.

"Did you peel that first?"

A giggle. How could a king giggle? A trait Mugiwara shared with Doflamingo. A monarch thing.

Luffy pawed at Law's shirt, a little like how Mercury snuffled her nose into it at times, then wrapped his arms around his waist and settled his head against Law's abdomen.

Law peered down at the unruly head of hair. His stomach was the next best thing to a cushion. Apparently. He knew the drill. Strawhat wore the necklace made of the basalt Zoro had sent him when that bunch, including Marco, sans Luffy and Law, had taken down Akainu. Avenged Ace.

Marco snored. Luffy joined him. Law rolled his eyes and turned a page.

Mercury dragged in both Pekopeko and Zoro. She was a little too stalwart—all muscle, thank you—for jumping on the bed. That white fluffy Maltese kind-of-whatever (an animal rescue Law had talked them into) had no such trouble. Despite how tiny it was, it leapt onto the mattress—probably some bushido bullshit—scrabbled onto Law's lap proper, circled a few times and followed its master into slumber. Tail brushing Marco's ear.

Law finally looked up from his book. Stared at Zoro. "You too?"

Zoro grimaced. "Could rent y'self out as a kotatsu."

Law nodded. Dropped his gaze to his book. Turned a page.

Mercury had Zoro in her sights, sat in front of him.

"What time is it dog?" he asked her. Like, why were they all huddled up together in the bed? The sun was still up. Napping was _his_ prerogative.

"Three pm. Walk-time on the weekend," Law answered for her.

Zoro glanced back at the sleeping mass and reading surgeon. He guessed the tables could turn at times.

Mercury locked onto him more intently.

"Leash and poo bags behind the laundry door."

Zoro wasn't sure. He rubbed the back of his head.

"I'll join you in half an hour. Don't get lost. Follow Mercury, she knows where to go."

Zoro didn't move. As if he ever got lost.

"Or join us."

Mercury ran to the door and back and to the door again. Law, still not looking up, smiled. Zoro too.

"Nami been training her?"

"She's got her wiles."

In half an hour, Luffy would stir, Marco wake, and the call of peace and quiet would be more than Law could resist. He'd Shamble himself out.

For now though he turned a page. Speed reading was his forte. Robin's hands had held his own down in the past to let her catch up to him when they read together.

He'd have to direct Zoro away from the steel girders of half-built towers and low-lying offices under construction. Wave Industries. The construction site was in the opposite direction from the park. Mercury couldn't stand the jackhammers and drills. Law's fillings rattled whenever he wandered past. The dog would never forgive him if he didn't rescue her.

And he'd need to stock up on all the food Luffy would suck out of their house. Marco might not appreciate waking up face-to-face with the pirate king. Like a lot of them, Strawhat was a mouth breather. But he'd thank him in the long run when he was throwing cupboard doors open, searching for crackers, and rattling the fridge shelves, desperate for cheese.

Zoro exited the house after the third try. Down the front steps instead of the back path. Toward the town, Mercury whining.

Law turned the page.

* * *

**A/N: **  
Mercurcy is the dog at the end of _Gimcracks_ Misery was the dog in Repossession, Teaspoons and Cuckold (AO3).  
Cuckold was an aberration, so doesn't fit this world.  
Pekopeko had a cameo in _Teaspoons_. This is their second appearance.  
Akainu was taken down in _Repossession_, and the story expanded upon in _Birds of a Feather._

Post canon. Luff's the pirate king. Luffy and Zoro are partners. Law and Luffy were partners in the past.


	13. Drivers-Robin, Shachi, Luffy, Marco, Law

**Devil Fruit Drivers**

* * *

Bepo had never seen Law so crestfallen. "Sorry, Captain. Sorry." He bowed. Over and over. "I need to be on time. I need to, and Robin's…"

"…reliable, Law. You know that." Robin walked to Law's side. He gazed out the depot window at the buses—empty of passengers—pulling in, the drivers stepping down. He lifted his chin minimally, his mouth a line.

Shachi came behind and clapped him across the shoulder blades. The redhead tottered backwards. Law didn't flinch.

"Jeez, just cos' you're in a bad mood doesn't mean you use haki." He picked himself up off the floor and dusted himself down. "Arsehole."

Law glared at him and Shachi flipped him off and stomped away. Dragged a plastic chair along the concrete floor of the office. Flopped down and pulled the day's schedule across the desk. Pit stains spread under the arms of his olive uniform. The drab colour really made his tattoos pop.

"You're speedy, Law, but you know."

Law sent Robin a warning glance from the corner of his eye.

"It's just that stamina's not your thing, is it?"

Shachi busied himself but couldn't wipe the smile off his face quite fast enough as Law turned and glared him down. Again. Were the boss and Nico a thing? He opened a pamphlet outlining all the models offered by the New World New Transport.

"You have to admit, boss, The _Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room_ is first class in terms of speed, but it's not designed to last the distance."

Bepo nodded, head down, hands clasped.

"You're traumatising your poor navigator," Robin said. "All he wants is to travel a few hours to see his family."

Law turned from the mess on Shachi's table, to Bepo fidgeting, and then to Robin. "And you're the woman for the job?"

Ruffled pride was more Marco's look, Robin thought, but Law wore it well.

"_The Mil fleur Transit's_ awful handy." Shachi flashed the page outlining the transport options offered by Nico Robin, the Demon Child, Law's way. The hands were a little on the slow side, and capricious. You never knew if you were going to be tickled, tortured or terminated. But they definitely delivered you from one doorstep to another if the woman behind the juice liked you.

And she liked Bepo.

Who didn't?

The door swung open, slamming into the exterior brick. Luffy catapulted _into_ the far wall, then out the door, then back in again. Shachi ducked as he zoomed overhead. Law groaned at the dent in the plaster. His hip pocket always paid for repairs.

Luffy swayed, straightened, and stood in front of Bepo. "What's up, Law's bear?" He didn't like to see anyone glum.

"Bepo," Law said.

Shachi said.

Bepo murmured.

"Thinks he can't trust the Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room to get him from point A to B," Law griped.

Luffy cackled. Of course. "Got a point. You're fast, that's for sure. Nice detailing. Even Franky says so. But your staying power..."

The look shot between Luffy and Robin was not lost on Shachi.

"...needs some work."

Nor the red tinge to Law's ears. They'd be brighter on top. Wow. Did Captain have no shame? Maybe his lack of stamina correlated to his lack of being able to maintain a stable relationship?

"Come with me, Bepo."

No-one was more surprised than Bepo that Luffy knew his name. Straw Hat should. They'd been running this transport depot together ever since the last corrupt official and country was taken down and conquered. And he'd tried to get him to join his crew more than once.

"Nah." Law shook his head.

"Bad idea." Shachi dogeared a page of the pamphlet.

"He's not suicidal, Luffy," Robin said.

The _Flex with Best_ guaranteed elasticity in application, but was wildly inaccurate in delivery. It guaranteed the transporter's safety, but encouraged displacement of bones and organs for passengers. The thrill seeker option came at a hefty 50,000 beri, or Luffy's whim if he liked you, and if he liked you, you started praying.

He looked almost as crestfallen as Law, and as worried as Bepo. For a breath. Then he surged forward and only a quick application of electro stopped him from wrapping his arms around Bepo. Or maybe it was that Shachi had unpacked a sandwich. If Luffy hadn't heard the crinkle of the paper, Law's shudder would have alerted him. He didn't feel the spark much, if at all, being rubber.

The _Phoenix Phire_ was phaster than anything that had come before it. Even than the Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room. The only thing against it was the driver enjoyed mid-air somersaults, and they dislodged all manner of victuals and venom when you were gripping the Phoenix's back.

"Law torturing you again, yoi?" Marco asked Bepo as he strode into the depot, brushing down his arms. He'd just returned from transporting medicines to Chopper's clinic. The drivers of the deluxe models were exempt from wearing uniforms and Marco's loose shirt fluttered around him.

Bepo nodded sadly and Law inhaled, kicked out a chair and slouched down at a nearby table. Why did he bother having a crew?

"Torturing me more like it. He's rejecting the Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room for other models." Law rested his chin on crossed arms.

"C'mon man." Marco placed a hand on Law's scrunched up shoulder. The Heart shrugged it off. "You know you've got a problem finishing too fast."

"Don't see any of you complaining."

Shachi opened the ledger in front of him. "That's not quite true, Law. Logged yesterday, 10:55 a.m.. Covered fifty klicks in record time then just stopped. Had to wait two hours for the Mil Fleur to complete another booking before Robin could cross the town and pick up the slack."

"Was feeling peaky. Flu season," Law mumbled into his arm. Sniffled.

"Day before yesterday, one job after the other had complications, though the first one went off without a hitch."

"I remember that one. It was five kilometres across town."

"Shut it," Law growled. He didn't need Bepo to collude with Shachi and the others against him.

"You did it in five minutes when it takes a human without powers an hour to walk as far."

"See." Law sat up, straightened, tried to puff his chest out.

Shachi ran his finger down the ledger. "The follow-up job's destination was two kilometres from the finish of the first, and you couldn't even ignite the engine."

Luffy, Marco, and Robin caught each other's gaze, nodded and shrugged. Law's talent and skill needed to be applied within a very specific timeframe or the customer was left grumbly and gravely unsatisfied.

"And there's all that premature ejection." Luffy's only level of conversation was loud. "You drop people anywhere when they piss you off or you run out of steam." As if Luffy didn't do exactly the same thing. It wasn't good when Law pushed them out into traffic though. New World, New Transport had narrowly avoided law suits a few times.

"Can't let Mina down, Captain. She'll have my hide for a hairbrush," Bepo said.

Law leant against the back of the chair and exhaled. Bepo's wife was tough, but hadn't his crew stuck with him across the years before she'd rocked up on the scene? Wasn't that a sign of perseverance? He must be doing something right.

Marco pulled a chair up next to Law's and handed him a brochure. "Got this from Chopper." He opened to a page of supplies. "There are small wipes with benzocaine you can use to slow things down."

Law side-eyed him, took the pamphlet and shoved it in his top pocket. Chewed his inner cheek to stop from yelling.

"Might not want to have that picture on show." Marco flipped the leaflet around and tapped it back into Law's clothes like a father preparing his son for prom.

"Just what are we discussing here?" Shachi asked.

Law shambled him out of the room to a scrap yard some sixty blocks away. Let's see how easily he got back.

"He's the dispatcher, you know," Robin said, tipping the schedule book her way. "It's not his fault that…"

"…you finish so quickly,…"

"…Law."

Crowded by the Mil Fleur, the Phoenix Phire, and the Best with Flex, Law had the feeling that the Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room was greatly outnumbered. Before he decapitated them all, Robin gripped his hands and Luffy limbered up and Marco cartwheeled (aerially) all over the office. They were the options people preferred? Vases smashed. Marco had already bent the blades of the overhead fan earlier that month. The calendar hung on one hook near the cavity Luffy had knocked into the wall.

"Fine." Law stood, the chair failing to tip over, though it did wobble, and stalked out the office. The door crashed into the side as he went, nestling into the damage Luffy had also made. Another one for his hip pocket.

"You're lined up for the next kids' show!" Luffy yelled after him. That should cheer him up.

No one was better at dismembering the kids in the safety of his Room. Little Max and Maxines floated under the dome—a bit like trouncing the bouncy castle—before Law reassembled them with the wrong body parts. When the din of complaints grew too loud he correctly realigned them. The shows were booked solid for months at a time. The Roomy room de la (V)room (V)room was in high demand.

"Brings in top beri," Marco said, flapped a wing. Papers blew across the office.

"He's our own grumpy Buggy!"

Robin and Marco stared. Guess he was. Bepo coughed.

"Anyway—" the Best with Flex stated.

"—where did you—" Phoenix Phire added.

"—want to go?" Robin cracked her knuckles, crossed her arms and readied herself for a journey. A devil fruit finger scratched the Mink under the chin.

* * *

**A/N**: Just a wee bit of nonsense to see in the New Year. Happy New Year to y'all. Thanks for choosing to read it! If you enjoyed it, faves, follows and comments are always met with love.


	14. house—yorishiro, Zoro, Kuina

**house / yorishiro**

* * *

The functioning part of a highly functioning alcoholic was no easy discipline. Or it was. As long as there was alcohol at hand. And alcohol was always at hand.

Zoro leant forward and picked up the bottle, its long neck cool between his index and pointer, light reflecting in its shale blue glass.

Resettling onto his cushion, he pulled the stopper, filled the sake bowl, and raised it to the small block of wood opposite, his bandana loosely draped across the cypress. Wado-Ichimonji and a white camellia rested on the bandana's folds.

A knotted purple _sageo-_cord decorated the scabbard like ropes linking outcrops across dark oceans; connecting them to land, the sea, the sky, the gods.

Purple—the colour of nobles and priests. Back in the day the shade was sewn into the undercoats of the rabble. Brilliant tones were outlawed for commoners, so the sacred trod the dusty streets in concealed defiance.

Zoro sipped, drank, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then placed the emptied bowl in front, sealed the bottle and dropped his head, legs crossed. Meditated, dreamt, slept, remembered, forgot.

Underneath his folded ankles, the satin cushion—also purple—pressed softly against his skin. The tatami, polished smooth with wear and liquid, needed cleaning or replacing. It shone with the sweat of training, or a few wayward droplets of sake. There weren't so many of those.

White for Shinto weddings, a _shiromuku_ kimono billowed on the wall behind him. An embossed dragon, phoenix, and lion-dog swirled into the white—fast-flowing currents rushing down the wide sleeves, over the back panel, spilling into the room.

A sheen brocaded the cloth like sun glancing from a knife's edge. Across the room, the under-leaves of the camellia released water, vapour and oxygen—their stomata absorbed poison to purify the air.

* * *

Isshin students cleaned the dojo, but a woman from the village dusted surfaces and straightened curtains when needed. She lifted her head at the sound of pots and pans clattering to the kitchen floor.

Koushirou's daughter, Kuina, fumbled about in the cupboard under the sink, looking for something, anything. Probably had in mind arranging the pink flower resting on the counter. Camellias bloomed through winter—a relief to the eye in the blinding snow that surrounded the house.

The girl filled a jam jar—its surface imprinted with apples and oranges. Left the cookware all over the linoleum, the tap dripping. She walked to the table, but the woman grabbed her wrist before she could slip the stem and flower into the makeshift vase.

"They drop whole when they fall." The woman gestured to the camellia. Kuina didn't break her hold, but could have. She easily defeated grown men in her matches. "We don't display them."

And as if the gods had slammed a rod against a chalkboard to make a point, the blossom tumbled to the floor. Whole. Petals spread only on impact. The woman nodded at Kuina, raised her eyebrows, clucked her tongue. _See?_ Released the girl's hand and swept up the plant.

"Pick some twigs and leaves. Or play in the snow." She tipped the foliage into the bin. "With swords or sticks or things. That boy. Zoro? Always up for battle. Find him." She shooed her from the kitchen.

* * *

The sword crossed the stem of the white flower. A commitment to get better. The dragon, the phoenix, and the lion-dog rushed and clattered in a torrent of cymbals and twists of neck and tail and feather and fur and scales.

Bark, bite, pierce, gouge, fire, slice, fly.

The gods surely heard them. Were sent by them. Swords, bottles, glass, and mirrors—all attracted and housed deities. Became them.

Kuina wouldn't see a wedding. Zoro neither. Whether both lived or not. But new beginnings grow from old. The shiromuku stilled behind as Zoro's own cape slid a fraction from his shoulders. Of course it did. He'd be the greatest swordsman, but he'd never know. Even after Mihawk conceded. He'd never know.

A feathered sweep brushed his arm, head, and ankles; the breeze a hawk's wing heralding samurai triumphs. He'd get there. He'd made a promise.

He poured another drink and downed it, stoppered the bottle and stood, shook out his trouser leg. Stepped across the room to gather Wado-Ichimonji and his other katana.

Whether to go out and drink, stay in and drink, practice and drink, or drink and sleep, were the choices faced and each was the same as the other, one day blending into the next, but he wasn't alone.

Luffy's apartment was a few down, on the left. He was never alone. He exited, hoping they hadn't switched the rooms or doors around again.

* * *

**A/N**: I really suggest reading this one on AO3 where it's posted under Harmonica_Smile with and is a stand-alone story with the same title. The accompanying art piece is embedded there, and it's a good (maybe necessary) reference to the story. I'm not sure if the story works without it (or even with it).

Thank you for reading, and thank you **so much** for a-tsute her art and for it also inspiring me to write this. Check out her tumblr or twitter or deviant art. It's probably easier to find her on twitter. tumblr is impossible to search, and I can't put in a link on ffn no matter how much I try (AO3 has them).

Here's a little information about yorishiro from wikipedia. If you google the term and wikipedia, you'll get more info of course. It's a short entry though: "A _**yorishiro**_ (依り代・依代・憑り代・憑代) in Shinto terminology is an object capable of attracting spirits called _kami_, thus giving them a physical space to occupy."


	15. screen—marco, law, chopper, hospital au

**A/N: **This fic can hopefully be read alone, but is in response to some fabulous artwork which is embedded in the upload on AO3. The art is by a-tsute. I fully recommend checking it out over there: Harmonica_Smile, title: **_screen / shiki-e_**. It's uploaded as a one shot. If you read it here, I hope it works, and thank you!

* * *

**screen / shiki-e**

* * *

The sun nudged the cold skies. The plum trees, free of leaves for winter, lined the path along the river. On his way to work, through the weak light, Law sought early blossoms. There. One bud on one stem of one tree out of ten. Discovering their secrets was the challenge. The flower would bloom in a day or two. Others were nested from sight, tucked into the kinks of the tree like a broody duck warming a cluster of eggs.

Geese paddled the river. The great white birds flew home when the cherry blossoms rustled in the longer days. Law pulled his coat close. The temperature edged to warmth degree by degree, but most days were a level of freezing and he was no stranger to the cold.

As for his colleagues, Doctors Tony and Phoenix—Marco and Chopper—they had trouble with the chill. Tony-ya was used to it, but the falling snow turned him a little wistful. The hospital cafeteria was brightened by a sliding panel depicting the seasons. The mural changed every three months, and in winter Chopper gazed at this rather than the flakes fluttering to the roads and paths outside.

He was easygoing and, even though he seemed a little sad, he let Law and Marco know time and again that he couldn't wait for spring, but before spring comes, snow falls seven times.

* * *

"Boots."

Lami looked up from the stoop of the genkan at her big brother. At his sneakers On his feet. Laces tied. Law was so bossy.

She reached for _her_ runners.

"Mum said boots. It's slush out there."

She pulled her runners onto her lap.

"You're not wearing boots."

"I'm older."

She flipped him off. "Mum said to wear boots," she repeated. Lami slipped her shoes on and did up the laces. On one side. She still had difficulty at times and Law knelt and tied the other.

"Who taught you that? It's rude."

"Sister."

"Sister?"

Lami put out a hand and Law helped her up. They wriggled into their coats and scarves and gloves, and pushed the heavy door open. The air nibbled their hands and faces, seeped through the cloth of their warm trousers and layers, froze the soles of their feet. Squashed and melting snowmen guarded the park, but the sun _was_ out and the ground visible.

"Yeah, Father Anthony said something to her then walked away, and she did this—" Lami flipped him off with both gloved fingers, a delighted grin on her face, "—behind his back."

"Don't, don't—" Law pushed her fingers down. "Don't do that in front of Mum and Dad, okay? Or Sister or Father."

Lami laughed. "They're not here, Law. Only you." She shot him the bird again and ran down the street. He puffed out a breath and chased her. Cheeky brat. The road was wet and slippery. She'd fall if he didn't catch her.

* * *

"Your socks are wet through. Look at your toes."

Law glanced down. They were a scary shade of blue.

Ms. Trafalgar whipped Law's hat from his head and hung it on the hook near the door, out of reach. He was a good kid, but a single-minded terror. He'd just drag a chair over to get it later, but for now he copped the scolding, the tops of his ears red with annoyance and the change of temperature. At getting caught and putting his sister in danger.

Their mother wiped hair, hands, feet, and made sure the towel snaked between their toes. The bath was heating up and they'd wash soon and regain colour, but Law _knew _Amber Lead disease weakened the immune system, and because Lami was younger she was more susceptible. Law needed to be more careful.

"Wanna know what else he did?" Lami asked, wrapped up all warm and cuddly and close to her mother.

"Mmm, what?"

"He taught me this." She kept Law's eye as she raised her fingers. "He said not to do it in front of Sister or Father Anthony. Or you or Dad."

"Did he now?"

She reached out to grab her serious but wilful son, his face a tint of murderous rage, and he let her. Still too small to run away.

It snowed the next day and didn't stop for a week.

* * *

Law didn't share Tony's desire to see spring chase winter's chill away. Warm weather and new shoots pushing through the softened earth, and ducklings scrambling in their mother's wake, were all well and good. He and his assistant, Bepo, visited the zoo every April to check out the baby animals. But hay fever cornered him like a schoolyard bully no matter how many antihistamines he swallowed, and Marco and he always had an influx of patients with colds and the flu.

It was meant to be an accommodating season, but the ailments spiked and delayed and threatened surgeries, and when it was either very quiet or busy the doctors might be called upon to treat the many snuffling fevered patients who came in.

Law's red-rimmed eyes (from rubbing and sneezing) scared the clients more than usual. Marco and Chopper did their best to assure them he only had an allergy and wasn't contagious.

Chopper's eyes lit with the thought of spring though, like ice washed through with sunrise at the mouth of a river. He especially looked forward to coming into the cafeteria after a long shift and enjoying the seasonal panel. The patients loved it too. It really cheered the room. Those with long-term illnesses hoped to be discharged before the murals swapped over.

Robin, the hospital's medical librarian, supervised the transition. Last year she'd commissioned an artist to paint the branches and stems of a flowering cherry tree, sakura, from one corner of the panel to the centre. Leaves cupped the base of a few blossoms, their rust tones aligning with the gold background.

The hospital wasn't affluent and helped the down-and-out, so real gold leaf wasn't worked into the paint, but the opulence of the flowers—the thought of the petals floating away from the frame and over the hospital floors, and lifting the inhabitants from every sad and painful thought they'd had, appealed to Chopper.

When he was younger, his benefactor, Doctor Hiriluk, took him to see the rows of sakura every spring, and always towards the end after strong winds had shaken many of the trees free of the pinks and reds and whites, but some petals still drifted. They both tried to catch them as they fell. The river was a cotton candy dream as they floated downstream.

Deep in the midst of winter, Hiriluk thought the flush of cherry blooms was needed to heal brittle hearts. Cold weather and cruel governance made life difficult for the residents of Drum Island, Chopper's place of birth. A few sakura flowered in late January and Hiriluk laughed as Chopper raced home to tell him that his dream had come true.

"Some strains flourish. True. It's a lesson for us. But to see everything blossom, even if just for an hour in the snow and cold? People couldn't help but come together."

Robin had great taste.

* * *

"You're too soft," Marco said. Law shot him a glance that told him to shut it.

With a tonne of chocolate and sweet-talking and clever alignment of hours _and_ volunteering to pull a few monster shifts, he'd organized an afternoon and night where Chopper, Marco and himself were free.

His attempts at flattery weren't the best even when his nose and eyes weren't watering with the pollen blown in from the cedar trees. It had taken effort, but was worth it.

Luckily beers and other drinks were in his backpack as a sneeze shook his body then another and another, frightening small green birds from their nectar harvest.

Usually Chopper would be at his side, clucking over his temperature, but he was too entranced by the blossoms floating along the river, and taking photographs of those robust and whole in the trees. They were pretty. Law rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand.

The geese hadn't returned to their colder clime yet either. The flowers signalled the change of seasons, but the three doctors were rugged up. The snow was gone, but a sharp wind blew in from the mountains.

Marco was accustomed to how the pollen bothered Law, and he wasn't alone. It was a drag for him too, though it didn't affect him so severely. He also had more patience with the many who shuffled their way through the doorway. Law usually wanted to study the latest review article or commit to some elective surgery to keep his skills up, and had to be careful not to fall sick. A patient's body was vulnerable in its recovery stage.

Oyaji had founded the hospital with Gol D. Roger back in the great age to take care of the many wounded from useless wars, and for the local folk who didn't have the cash to go elsewhere. The cherry blossoms had fluttered down then too as the two men lifted sake cups and drank to the healing of a new era.

Marco had been a Whitebeard apprentice, not sure what he wanted to be or do. He worked nearly every job from janitor to reception before Oyaji took him aside and told him to aim higher. He had the gift of restoration, he said. Use it.

They'd been surprised when a doctor of Law's capability and pedigree wanted to work with them, but one drunken night he'd told Marco how he and his guardian visited hospital after hospital trying to treat a childhood disease. The staff shunned him and screamed and yelled that he was an infectious beast. A white monster. They'd even called in the military.

He chose to work where others wouldn't, where he could help the most.

And there was something else. Marco wasn't sure what, but Law snapped at nurses and other doctors. His words should've been dripping with honey when dealing with the board members, but he was abrupt and direct. He got the job done, that was for sure, but it wouldn't have hurt him to work on his people skills.

However, with Chopper, and when he had to go to the kids' ward, he was flexible. Chopper was so good-natured he didn't even realise what he got away with. The other personnel, even Marco, and even the no-nonsense Robin, sometimes sidled up and asked him to put their requests before Law so they at least got heard, and so they didn't have to endure his gruffness. Law's empathy ran deep, but Chopper was perhaps the only one who never doubted it.

* * *

Anemone. Chopper didn't even know the name. Two huge blooms took up the entire screen. They were pretty and bright, and their large centres twisted and turned like carp in a pond, and the kids would love them, but they weren't cherry blossoms. He'd only been at the hospital a year. Spring was the time for sakura. Everyone knew. He wiped a finger under his eye.

Marco and Law pushed the door to the cafeteria, worn out after an impromptu meeting on working conditions. The new admin wanted things changed, and not always for the better. It helped having Law there. Marco's tattoo, his affiliation with the Whitebeards, was hidden under his dress shirts or scrubs, but Law was so inked he couldn't cover everything. Especially his fingers.

Generally he took notes and listened, scowled, as administrators tried to cut pay and increase hours. All it took at times for them to reconsider, was for him to sit back in his seat, elbow in the air, rubbing at the back of his neck, forearm and shoulder tattoos evident, earrings unorthodox, and DEATH tapping the table near his notebook. Or for them to grow nervous at the least.

Law had been whining about something, and Marco nodded—thinking about coffee, but both stopped and stared at the younger doctor when they heard a choked intake of air over the clanking of plates and cutlery against the lunchtime trays.

"What's wrong?" Law's tone would've had the board members fleeing for the exit, but Marco recognised alarm in the cadence, and Chopper was immune.

Maybe he'd lost a patient. It rarely happened. The kid was amazing. But when it occurred it was a solemn time for everyone, a reality you never got used to.

Chopper tried to smile, but couldn't. It was dumb. He was so young and immature. Law and Marco were brilliant.

"Spring's here, right, Chopper?" Marco asked. He patted Law's back. "He's the one who can't stop crying because of the pollen. But you were looking forward to it."

Law moved his head slightly. Now was not the time. But upset Chopper wasn't right.

"Not cherry blossoms," Chopper said.

Both the doctors glanced at him, puzzled, then at each other. They walked to the mural.

"Not..?" Law asked.

"The painting. They're purple, and red, and colourful and sweet, but they're not cherry blossoms."

"Nah, that was last year. Robin likes using more than one flower to show change," Marco said. He turned his watchband.

"How can anyone heal without the sakura blooming?"

Chopper was shaking. He was a big guy. One of those gentle, burly giants. Law took his arm, hand across his back, tucking his folder under his own arm, and propelled Chopper toward the cafeteria windows. They overlooked the green hospital grounds all the way to the river.

"You enjoyed that picture last year?" he asked.

Chopper snuffled. Trying not to be so stupid. Marco trailed behind and handed Law a pack of tissues. Law passed a clump Chopper's way. He pushed them up against his dripping nose.

He nodded.

"No-one died, right?" Marco asked.

Chopper shook his head. Law glared at Marco. Marco shrugged. He'd had to ask. There was protocol.

"Not this time 'round, but my benefactor—"

Ah, Law listened a little closer. Marco leaned in. Great men had raised them and they had lost them all.

"—loved cherry blossoms."

Law nodded, rubbed Chopper's back, and tapped the glass. "Look, Tony-ya." Chopper scrubbed at his face with the snotty tissue. Law took it from him. Dumped it in the bin, and Marco passed a clean bunch over. "See the pink on the horizon?"

Chopper squinted out the window, sucked up a repulsive curl of mucous, and nodded.

"Cherry trees."

"In bloom," Marco added.

Even if the patients couldn't leave the hospital to see them, the windows gave them a view.

* * *

Law lay down the tarpaulin and kicked off his shoes and put his backpack in the middle, placing a few containers of food on the corners that lifted in the breeze. He sniffled into his scarf.

Chopper ran around with Law's hat, trying to capture the blossoms dropping from the trees. Law passed a beer Marco's way and pulled back the tab on his own. They clinked cans and guzzled half down before lifting the lids of the containers.

Law drew his coat around him.

Marco remembered that other day, a little warmer, a plateau in front of a rushing waterfall far up a mountain. They were in a clearing, Pops and Roger, the bowls of sake. He'd only been fifteen, but Whitebeard had wanted him to be involved from the get go with the new hospital he and Roger mapped out.

He'd hung about in the trees, enjoying the flowers. They drifted to the ground and were caught in the river's torrents, and were so much a part of Roger and Whitebeard that attention was given by paying no attention at all. They'd fall and rise and bloom and fall again.

Roger had been from the clan with D in their name. There weren't so many and they were fierce and often persecuted. The ruling class of the time labelled them insurgents, needing to be weeded out and eradicated.

As he recalled, Law had that initial. He had the defiance of a D, that was for sure. Maybe more cautious than Roger, though not always. It wasn't foolhardy but they wouldn't be here enjoying the canopy of flowers above if not for him. He'd let Law know the meaning of the letter someday if he had interest.

For now, the North Blue doctor sat up and sneezed and rubbed his hand over his nose, gulped his drink and flipped two fingers at the river gliding past and at the geese bobbing on top of it. Flipped off cherry blossoms and Chopper as well, though just by chance.

"What's that about?" Marco asked.

"Sometimes you wear sneakers when boots would be better. You want cherry blossoms but you get anemones. And you had a sister who'd throw you under a bus but you'd do anything for her." Law spoke to the water.

"Even getting yourself run over?"

Law turned to Marco, nodded, remembering his mother slapping the back of his head. He gave Lami an arm burn later, but never tattletaled on her getting him in trouble. Probably because his mother would have given him another smack, or taken his medical books away.

Chopper was used to sleeping from nine pm to seven am. He hadn't got the hang of the horrendous hours the medical teams had to pull. Belladonna and a few others, even old man Crocus, had swapped shifts with Law while he organised the time off for himself and Chopper. Marco was cool. He did his own rearranging, but Law would be run into the ground more than normally in the near future. His choice.

"Amber Lead got her. She was cute as fuck and rude as hell, and she taught me that sometimes you gotta make flowers bloom in winter and not give a shit if you upset the balance of things."

"If you've got someone to look after you," Marco picked up one of the containers and picked out a slice of maki-sushi. They'd bought them from the convenience store before they left the hospital. Law had been too busy to ask the dietician to whip something up. He'd pay for that later. Sanji got his nose outta joint pretty easily when it came to food.

Marco passed the container over to Law. "Someone to take up the slack, bear the consequences."

"Always helps, right?" Law said, picking out a segment, eating it whole. His guardian, Cora-san, had taken bullets for him. "She got me in so much trouble."

Chopper was fishing Law's hat out of the river.

"You gonna get angry at that?" Marco laughed, rubbed under the lenses of his glasses.

Law groaned. Closed his eyes. Brought his knees to his chest. Continued to chew. Flipped two fingers to the air again as if it was a meditative pose. Which Marco guessed it was, for him.

"Just let me know that it's filled with petals."

They were impossible to catch from the air. Easier in the water. Scungier too, but easier.

"To the brim."

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, the small birds in this are mejiro, or white-eye. I only know them as mejiro.

There is the tradition of shiki-e, or changing artworks by season.

I'm referencing, but not using too deeply, an old proverb from the north part of Japan that Before spring comes, snow falls seven times.

越後では 七雪降って 春来たる / Echigodewa nanayuki hutte haru kitaru.

I can read some of that, but my kanji skills are pretty atrocious. A friend taught it to me awhile back. I'm using her transliteration.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to know your thoughts. Thank you to those who have faved, followed or reviewed this collection.


	16. Uniform - Law, Akainu, Family, fluff

**uniform**

* * *

"mffhemmgrgg…TRA..gln…AR!"

"Sir?"

Principal Akainu swung his finger under the elastic of his mask, unhooked it from one ear and let it dangle from the other.

"You'll infect me, Sir."

The huge man rose from his desk. As if he could infect anyone from Flevance.

"One point five metres remember, perhaps even two. I wouldn't get any closer." Law leaned back in his seat, crossed his shoes at the ankle. A bit scuffed and scratched up. Game of soccer at lunch and he hadn't bothered to change into his sports gear. Mud along the cuff of his trousers.

Aikanu slammed his fists on the desk. Its oaken grain hardly rattled. But it did rattle. He had some meat on those fists. Law rubbed a knuckle against his eye. Tired.

"Only white allowed, Trafalgar." It's not as if the reprobate didn't know. The Donquixote family constantly flouted the dress code. Baby 5 running around with a mask scalloped like a doily. The Donquixote symbol imprinted all over Bellamy's. Dellinger's mask swam with fish and Gladius' exploded in colour—literally. Like the cloth was manifest with hand-fluoro-grenades and cluster bombs.

It wasn't a simple matter of the white cotton having run out.

But, huh. So it was easier to talk through cloth? Even so, they needed to be uniform or the students got competitive, and the designs got flashier and more elaborate, and before you knew it someone had thrown themselves off the top floor of the school because their mask was too plain and everyone hated them. Or a revolution. A revolution was on the cards. Neither was an ideal situation.

Sure, sure, Fujitora could wear purple-patterned tiger print—Akainu shuddered to think if it matched his underwear—but that was the kind of absurdity that would come to pass if everyone was permitted to wear any mask they wanted any old way, any old day.

Looked like the kid had punched holes in his ears too. That was an offence. And they'd have to dye that blue tint black. Had enough of a headache battling Mrs. Eustass every time they sent a note home instructing Kid to standardise the colour of his hair. She never even bothered to change out of her bunny slippers. Worse than Tsuru.

"What was it on Monday?" Akainu jammed the end of a pen in his mouth and ground down. Craved a cigar.

Law moved his head, confused. The old man was gonna ink his lips if he wasn't careful.

"The design, dipshit. On Monday?"

"Flamingos, Sir." Law had wanted to wear the bear paw print motif that day, but Doflamingo had been pensive, and pink usually cheered him up. It was a pretty nice mask, and Doffy had embroidered the black cloth himself with his favourite bird.

"Today?"

"Hearts."

How to explain that when Giolla and Cora got their heads together there was no stopping them, and they spent hours on each design. And really, there wasn't any white thread to be found. Or white material. It was a freaking pandemic out there. Didn't the teachers have better things to worry about?

It was a slippery slope. You let one thing go you let them all, and hell, a mudslide snowballed into an avalanche.

A sharp rap at the door and both Law and Akainu turned. Tsuru ushered in Portgas, Monkey and the sword boy.

"Not standard, Sir," Tsuru tapped the bottom of her own mask, not her face. Bubbles on a blue background floating to the sky. She wasn't referring to herself.

"Too close," Law exhaled, warm air trapped in cotton, as Luffy pushed ahead of Ace and breathed onto Law's neck. Ace yanked him back. Too close to Ace now, but they were family.

"Thanks, Traff!"

Law looked behind him. Portgas pointed at the fire framing the edges of his mask. Gladius had helped with that one. Red elastic. Black material. Pretty cool. Cora handstitched the straw hats that patterned Luffy's, and Zoro had sewn the three swords on his bright green creation under Giolla's guidance.

"Wipe that smirk off your face."

Law turned back to Akainu and stared him down. As if he could tell.

"There's a shortage of white cotton." Tsuru adjusted her own mask again. It slipped when she spoke. "You know that."

Akainu opened a ledger on his table. "Trafalgar's infractions pre-date the pandemic."

Law thinned his lips. Under the red hearts. Face Akainu gussied up in a Giolla-Cora-Doflamingo inspiration (Law, not Akainu), or face Giolla-Cora-Doflamingo in standard white protective gear?

He'd rather a thousand detentions or whatever that week's punishment happened to be. The last time he'd obeyed Akainu the Family made him wear one of Baby 5's designs to school.

It certainly was white and ruched and pleated and frilly. Eustass didn't let him live it down and he got detention anyway. Or extra homework. Or whatever they were doling out that day. Sitting in seiza outside the principal's office. With the damned mask on, all the students traipsing by.

Akainu thought he'd been taking the piss.

"How's your supply, Sir?" Law asked Akainu as he hooked the elastic back over his ear, repositioned the covering on his face.

He frowned.

"Akainu?" Tsuru asked.

He opened his drawer and looked at the package. One left. Salarymen, office ladies, all the teachers, they had to wear plain white gear. It was neat and disciplined and bred no competition.

But his staff had been flouting the rules lately too.

He jabbed the pen Tsuru's way.

"Yours. That bubble thing. Where'd you get it?" It was more difficult to hear him now, but he was clearer than before. The angrier he got the more distinct he became.

"Associate," Tsuru said, staring at the window rather than Akainu.

He was going to kneecap Trafalgar if he didn't stop smirking. He didn't care how soft those hearts made him look. Had he inked his fingers? Where did he think he was? Some reformatory? He'd send him there. No good ever came out of the Donquixote household.

"Sengoku?" Sengoku's masks alternated between seagulls and goats. "Where'd he get his?"

"Same."

Fraternising with the damn enemy. But there was no white thread to be found. Or cloth.

"Tell 'em I want five, pronto." The Board of Education insisted that they be protected at all times. Saved them, saved the students.

"There's no white cloth, Sir," Law said. Baby had hoarded it all. White was available, but the styles were on the ruffled side of things.

"What's it to you?"

Law shook his head. Nothing.

"There's no white cloth," Tsuru said, "or thread."

"Black?"

Tsuru crossed the office, smart shoes tapping over the polished floor, stood side on, viewed the garden. "Garp's doing a great job on those roses."

Akainu sucked the air against his teeth. Yeah, yeah, but he preferred tea flowers himself. Delicate and the plant was useful.

Tsuru glanced Law's way. The three boys slouched against the wall behind him. He lifted a raised thumb against an itchy ear, pinched it. Tsuru thought that was a positive. "Brown?" she asked, "in case there's no black?" Law raised his thumb again and flapped it against the top ridge of his ear, like a dog shaking out a flea.

Akainu narrowed his eyes. "Pierced your ears, Trafalgar?"

A touch of panic crossed Law's face, then left, and he closed two fingers over his lobe. Baby had done it. Practicing her beautician skills with a sterilised needle and a bit of thread. Doff had finished the job with his powers so it healed quickly.

"Pink?" Tsuru asked.

Akainu turned her way. What would he do with a pink mask?

"Asking for Hina."

Law dropped a hand by his chair, arm swaying slightly, thumb down.

"Sit up Trafalgar! Portgas, wake _up_. Roronoa, jeez, stop that snoring."

The Monkey boy looked at him. Eyes eager but who knew if that shit-eating grin plastered his face.

"Monkey, get out."

Disappointment? Fuck these masks. How was he ever meant to know what the students were planning if he couldn't read their expressions. Straw hats. It'd be the end of him.

"Black is okay, Akainu. Brown too, I think. But have to check on pink."

The principal jerked back in his seat then back to that D. troublemaker. Two D troublemakers. "_Out_," he roared, waking Portgas and Roronoa. "You as well!. Don't you know there shouldn't be more than two people in a room at a given time?"

They didn't need encouragement and though Luffy wanted to give Law a reassuring pat on the arm his brother stopped him.

"Soon you can annoy him all you want, but it's really not a good idea to get too physical now."

"What about our classes, Sir?" Zoro asked, pausing by the doorway. "Twenty-eight folk at least in those."

"Have you got a mask?"

"Got swords on it." Zoro pointed to his face. That was another one who had to dye his hair constantly.

Akainu rolled his eyes, stood half out of his seat again and directed him out with a glare.

"Five brown, five black, STAT," he said back over his shoulder, Tsuru's way.

"Can I go, Sir?" Law asked. He gathered his bag.

"Snowed under, but they're a big operation, so I'm sure they'll get onto them as soon as they can. Particularly as it's for the frontlines," Tsuru said. "Gotta check about that pink, but they had rolls of black and brown last time I visited."

She moonlighted as a parole officer. It took her to the grimmer parts of town.

"_Pftt_." Akainu exhaled, grunted.

Tsuru looked out again at the roses, lifted her hand to indicate to Law that he should stand and accompany her out.

* * *

No-one mentioned it on fear of death or a lifetime of homework and club duties (or sitting seiza until your legs needed amputation) but the design that Akainu liked to wear most was the one that Tsuru must've had a hand in. A light crewel work of a sakazuki tsubaki, or a gourd camellia, was stitched along the jaw and the side of one of the brown masks.

Apart from it being a name colleagues called him (the school was its own form of hierarchical family) he admired the red flower, and the actual sakazuki cups filled to the brim with sake that he'd shared with his roughhouse brothers way back when.

They'd promised one another they'd knock some kind of learning and rigorous training into the heads and minds of the deadbeats who stumbled across their school's threshold (cos very few walked through the doors with their shoulders back and their chests wide). When he glanced at himself in the mirror in the morning the design reminded him, kept him on track. If Sengoku could wear goats he could wear the camellia with pride.

It irked him to see the Trafalgar boy, the Donquixote flunky, with submarines one day, penguins the next, and even a spooky white flower sunk into the cloth (he thought there was no white thread or material) which glowed when they hit the lights for videos. But he had to let it go. The pandemic was easing up, but wasn't gone, and for the duration, he had to ease up on the school regulations, but they weren't gone either.

Law, for his part, never let anyone know, except Doflamingo and never Cora, of the crude penes he'd stitched on a small panel placed between the two cuts of cloth that formed the masks. No-one needed any convincing that Akainu was a dickhead, so Law kept that piece of information to himself, which was mature of him, even if the design was not. He was a teenager after all.

* * *

"What are you smirking at, Trafalgar?"

Law stared at Akainu, all cat-eyed innocence.

"Sir?" The man had x-ray vision now?

Still, Law could tell his lips were twisted into a snarl behind by the mask.

"On your way."

Law adjusted the cloth, careful not to touch his face, and walked away. He'd lost a bet with Cora and he'd made him wear a pickled plum design. Dried little shrivelled up bitter fruit. Just as well the klutz hated bread as passionately as Law did, and no-one had thought to torture him yet with his nemesis.

* * *

**A/N**: Fun fact. Japan schools and workplaces have been criticised recently for not changing policies about only wearing white masks. However, there isn't any white thread to be found, and disposable masks are in short supply. It doesn't apply to all schools or workplaces. Also, yeah, I know, Japanese schools don't really have detention as a punishment. This is a hybrid AU set somewhere.

* * *

So this was just a quick one. I just wanted to riff on the idea of Law getting into trouble because of Donquixote fashion. After all, the brighter and the blingier the better Plus, maybe a bit topical to our times, and hopefully a touch of lightness. Thanks for reading. If you liked it, all feedback is appreciated.


	17. storm - shakky ficlet, nico robin

**storm **

* * *

The thing about mangroves is their sacrificial leaves. They suck up the salt from the seawater and die so the tree doesn't have to*. Shakky was sure not to die but had experienced enough salt in her lifetime that she didn't bat an eyelid at fleecing anyone stupid enough to walk into her bar and ignore the description. Rip-off bar. It wasn't a joke. You had to stay ahead of the game to be in the game. Let those chumps be her sacrificial leaves. They kept her financially healthy. The Sabaody groves suited her just fine.

Knowledge was power and power was a weapon. Shakky ran a cloth over the counter, tipped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray, resumed wiping, smoking. Nico Robin had remained silent, hadn't told her friends, but knew who Rayleigh was. Probably could list the names of all the supernovae too. Likely recognised Shakky.

She'd asked about the Void Century and Rayleigh confirmed what they all understood. There wasn't anyone smarter this side of the Red Line—_either_ side of the Red Line—than the Oharan scholars. Pirates were men of action, not analysis. She wasn't sure what that made Robin, or herself for that matter. Women of action and analysis. A good combination.

And then there was that kid, one of the eleven, arrived before the Straw Hats. Had a submarine so didn't need any coating. Could only have been there to gather information. Shakky bet he knew who she was. She was definitely aware of his name.

She'd walked around the bar, collecting tankards, and it was easy to liberate a few beri from the back pocket of that redhead in the boiler suit. Though the captain—the kid—appeared to notice. Didn't say anything. Just ordered another round. Guess they'd already paid for it.

Was it intentional, the discussion about the will of D? He spoke quietly. She lowered the shutters. He checked off the names of his rivals, their bounties, knew something. Said the celestial dragons would be sure to call in the admirals with their enemies in their midst.

She slipped behind the bar, poured a dram of whiskey. Knocked back the first one, sipped the second. Monkey D. Luffy was out there somewhere. Had been making a name for himself. Shanks had faith in him. The energy of the old times was stirring. Static before a storm.

She'd kick this lot out soon. Didn't need that on her doorstep. Not yet. Seemed that Garp's grandson helped people far more than he hurt them, and that was a plus for her.

* * *

**A/N:** This is part of the Women!Wanted Zine flash fiction challenge. The zine will be out later this year and is in support of MALALA organisation, supporting education for girls.

Prompt: storm. Word count limit: 450 words.

Thank you for reading.

*I'm not an expert on this, and people who are have told me that this is still fact, but there is contradictory material out there. So I'll run with current perceptions and let the metaphor stand.


	18. praise-monet ficlet, doflamingo

**monet (praise)**

* * *

Some people know how to take cyanide with style. They know the best thing to do is what others tell them to. It's not even knowledge. It's a felt thing. A truth. Seeped into the bones. Like people driven and hidden in caves sheltering from the hordes who will come. And they _will_ come. Invading the shores, clambering over rocks slippery with seaweed and sharp with cracked and embedded shells. In battle, the murderous always approach. Spare the civilian none. Cyanide is an officially endorsed plan.

The natural enemy of the people are the people, othered people. Them over there. Not us here. Those who know best tell us what's best to do.

It's an honour to die for honour. Strengthening the lives of some, the special, is not such a bad thing. Vergo never got in the way of the King. And what power.

Not human but harpy, she could only get stronger. Would have got stronger if she'd returned and she would've returned. If she'd had a say in it.

Vergo was gone. Law had ribboned him to strips it seemed. And was that Building D? An explosion rippling the island, but not enough to wipe it off the map. Clever power, but the Young Master was not happy. The den den. Angry at Law. Not angry at them. The opposite of happy. Sad. Sad that they had to die for him.

But like popping the pill, pulling on googles, letting the engine of a fighter plane ignite, it was noble to ignite along with it. Zeroing in on the target. No other purpose was higher. Was it brave or weak for leaders to leave the earth in the face of defeat, leaving their followers without direction? To face danger alone? She'd never know. Young Master would be pirate king.

She didn't need praise, didn't need encouragement, to do what had to be done. Doflamingo had offered warmth and food and a bed each, though he at first let Monet share with her sister, Sugar. They had their own rooms with their own locks and keys. Her new body adapted for battle would've met his approval. Fight _and_ flight. Couldn't be more perfect.

Her finger hovered over the button like a feather on the breath of god.

* * *

**A/N**: **prompt**: praise

**word count**: 450? (this comes under)  
This is part of the Women!Wanted Zine flash fiction challenge. The zine will support the Malala Organisation.

A Feather on the breath of god is a beautiful album of sacred vocal music which was originally composed by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century. I just love the expression in conjunction with Monet and her last act of almost free will (or was it?).


	19. Tsuru's Wring Cycle

**Tsuru's Wring Cycle**

**(smile/rain)**

* * *

Rain was good for Tsuru. It brought a smile to her face. What could pass as a smile. It wasn't good for drying of course, but washing—washing needed water, and water came with rain.

Many the wayward marine were in need of cleansing and wringing out to dry, or drip-dry. It never hurt them to get caught in a deluge. Consider it the rinse cycle, or act two of her own personal Wring Cycle.

If they were going to be tough as Garp they had to be as tough as Garp and stupid. Or bull-headed. Who knew what was wrong with the old man, but at least you knew where you stood with him, which, in the case of the recruits, was usually punched through a wall.

The cheek of asking her if he could borrow one of her ships. No. Just as well he didn't have a devil fruit. He'd have drowned by now with the number of vessels he'd sunk through his own recklessness.

There really wasn't that much to smile about in this New World. At least there was that little fairy. She was cute. But Issho's foolishness...letting the Straw Hats and Trafalgar Law get away, and the other crews. Time had taught her another's traits could not be tamed.

But they'd nabbed the lynchpin. Doflamingo chained to the ground opposite her. No matter how many times she applied her fruit to him she doubted any of the menace would wash off. Interesting though. Toddler-like. _Enfant terrible_. The worst. Garp.

"O-Tsuru."

"Doflamingo."

"What's black and white and red all over?"

She shifted her chair back slightly in the dark hull of the navy vessel transporting the fallen demon-angel. The boat listed but the chair didn't lose its footing.

"You can be as bored as anyone else in Impel Down." Tsuru's arms crossed her chest. She didn't argue with anyone, let alone Doflamingo. A fool's game "No newspaper."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"That's the point."

He'd be the type to tutor others out of a need to keep his mind occupied and to be six steps ahead, even while in chains. Everything was a potential asset and resource.

It wasn't rare to find fidelity _to_ a concept amongst the marines. Whether the concept was worth marrying your life to was another matter.

Doflamingo had released his strings when she'd chided him at a meeting of the Shichibukai in the past, but not from shame. Scum floated on the clearest of waters if it banked against rocks and sandbars; if it was blocked and allowed to gather.

Maybe if more people with power let Doflamingo know his abuse of it was not to be tolerated he wouldn't be supine in a cell at the bottom of a navy ship. But the alternative had to be palatable. Clowns and their egos.

It stormed outside. Rain pelted the decks and a canon fired but not from their ship.

Fire was necessary for food and warmth, and rain washed things clear and clean. But too much rain, too much water was a problem for both her and the ex-shichibukai.

Blazes stripped forests, rivers flooded, oceans stormed. Refuse gathered and was washed to sea. Rain didn't eliminate it, but dispersed it where it did less harm. Or let it cluster where it would.

* * *

**A/N:** I combined two prompts: smile and rain, and am late with this one. I'm not sure if the word count was 450 or 500, but I'm over.

In my translation, Doflamingo calls Tsuru O-Tsuru when he's being escorted to Impel Down. She also says, "Takes a thief to know one." I want to know more about her background now.

It's easier to do this tough old bird justice in AUs actually, but here you go, Tsuru-san.

Thanks for reading. All feedback love is definitely matched with the same :-)


	20. shinobu—family (approx: 400 words)

**shinobu-family**

* * *

They didn't come from a noble family, Oden's retainers, although they served one. Appointed themselves to serve it. When the ruling noble family became anything but, she quit and served the true family, the exiled and humiliated Kozuki clan, with a vengeance of loyalty. What's done to me I'll do to—_not_ mine, but—thine.

Law said he wouldn't forgive. She'd insisted his traitor-comrades be eliminated. Kanjuro had defended him and Kanjuro was the turncoat. A member of her family, of Orochi's. But she knew, perhaps she knew. She hoped Law would forgive.

Orochi and Izou and O-Kiku and Kanjuro all lost relatives and were persecuted because of them, then hunted down for choosing a new family over others. Bar Orochi.

Turns out Kanjuro was keen to die at any point. His clan name was his state of being.

The people of Wano, the wider kin, suffered. Oden sacrificed himself for them—the retainers—for them, the people, and they didn't know. A hundred lives saved every day as he danced over five years. 182,500 people.

Female warriors have smuggled weapons past checkpoints and over borders for centuries, hidden in the skirts and hems of dresses; hammers cocked, triggers pulled, guns fired. Like past insurgents, Shinobu dispersed katana to the Scabbards and fought with her own. Sharp objects gave her the chills now, but then her kunai knives pierced the throats of enemies. Silently. With skill.

She chose the harder path. Couldn't choose any differently. Whether the road was strewn with fewer or more bodies was yet to be seen. But she served one family and was loyal to those who were loyal. To break the cycle means stepping outside the mould. Would Law forgive her? Kanjuro was the traitor.

Things grow fetid with time and lack of attention. Also fertile. In the last bloom plants push out one blossom after the other like shuriken flung across the room. Perhaps with precision.

Women are born with all the eggs they'll have in their lifetime, pockets of progeny given one chance after another.* Many fall by the wayside. Near the end, the cycle shortens. The need for permanence presses in.

Great acts of one's own, supporting others in the service of family, also usher in times for people to laugh without crying inside.

Family. Was one more valid than the other? She thought so.

* * *

**A/N:  
**

*Just from one quick article I read, some newer studies are saying that eggs might be produced throughout a woman's lifetime. That article is from a fertility clinic (google fu), but was quoting peer-referenced stuff. I wasn't going to research it too thoroughly for a flash fic (because of time restraints).

I bring all that up because of Shinobu's devil fruit, and am approaching it from a life-cycle point of view, rather than any stance of what role women should or shouldn't play in their lives.

Shinobu is really complicated, actually, and the Wano arc has intrigue within intrigue, and we're not done with her story yet, so we'll see how it unfolds.

But yeah, a major Oda theme is family and unjust persecution of families and groups, and how that persecution leads to further barbarity in many cases. I might have some canon facts above wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

**Prompt**: Family

**Word Limit**: 400

**Thanks for reading**. All feedback is very much appreciated 3


	21. whipped them all soundly-shakky, big mom

**whipped them all soundly—shakky, big mom**

* * *

Linlin, what a riot. Those kids didn't know what they were getting into. Oh, everyone thought a pirate's life was all swashbuckling fairy tales and adventure, but they hadn't met Big Mom yet.

She threw back tankards of ale like thimbles of water. Preferred sweets, but didn't mind a drink or two and, after her very many babies and husbands, who could blame her?

That king who'd murdered his wives to marry new ones—King-Someone-or-the-Other-the-Eighth—Shakky had always thought the number indicated the wives he'd discarded rather than kings with the same name from the same line. He had _nothing_ on Linlin.

True, her husbands were mostly exiled, depending on their political clout. But she ate them at times, ingested their souls, let them settle into her homies—the anthropomorphic plants, flowers, and objects she surrounded herself with. The walls literally had ears with her.

Thirty kids by the age of thirty, and the eldest was only twelve. Linlin's fertility was insane. To twelve different husbands. Yeah, King-Somebody-the-What had six wives and murdered just two of them, and didn't eat any. Amateur.

Perospero, Linlin's eldest, was about twelve. He came to the bar with his mama. Kaido, apprentice that he was, looked after the others. Apprentices needed to pay their dues. Shakky was twenty-six, and enjoyed meeting the other pirates—Whitey Bay before Whitebeard had his own crew, Big Mom. Who wouldn't want to drink with them? Garp had his eye on them, and she knew how that felt.

So it didn't surprise her that Linlin raised twelve kids (or had someone do it for her), met and eliminated twelve husbands _and_, along with Kaido, Whitebeard and Rocks, terrorised the world. Then drank up. A pirate's life was the wormwood of tales, alcohol a swashbuckling requisite.

Shakky lay back on the couch in her Rip Off Bar, inhaled a cigarette, scratched at her temple, flicking a few strands of hair. Her legs lazed over Rayleigh's, the old coot. Linlin's partners didn't even get the chance to cheat.

Shakky knew when someone was stronger than her, but didn't let it get her down. A bee still stings a bear if it gets in its way. Shame about the subsequent death, but those stems pack a wallop of poison. Shanks was a year old when Rocks went down. Luffy not even born.

* * *

**A/N**: I wanted to write a bar scene of Big Mom and Shakky meeting. There's just four years between them, so Shakky must have known of her at least when she was with the Rocks Pirates. Now, there's a story waiting to be told (I'm sure it has been). The zine that I'll be writing a piece on Shakky for wants things fairly canon though, so I've just kinda left the idea vague. AND, the tale is more about Big Mom than Shakky, but isn't Big Mom and her life the grimmest fairy tale out there? My timeline might be out, but I'm going by the wiki and the corresponding chapters.  
**Prompt: Fairy tale.**  
**Word Limit: 400 (this is under).**


	22. a tiding of magpies-KidLaw

**A Tiding of Magpies**

* * *

Kid was the collector but Law, the magpie. Black, white—songs of honey and wire brushing the night sky.

True. One of the shitty eight percent that protected nests and lined them with the bright and pretty pulled from the hair and scalps of little girls pedalling bicycles through the birds' home range. The tykes had only wanted an ice cream from the shops. Law didn't care. Scarred 'em for life.

Kid knew magpies were sociable, but territorial. Sometimes mean. Law could be all three. They raised cuckoos at times, the chicks so different from their own but treated like kin. The imposter kicked its foster sisters and brothers from the nest—if its mother hadn't already devoured the eggs.

Law was the magpie, but Kid the collector. He picked up the Taisho-era plate. People threw out the old because purchasing the new heralded beginnings. How many oceans had it crossed? He wiped his sleeve across its surface, turned it and located the maker's mark, or not. A line of grime coated the porcelain base like dust trapped by tape.

Two hundred beri—going for a song. He pulled a few coins from his pocket, clinked them onto the saucer on the counter (eyed that too), waved away the offer of a plastic bag, but wrapped the plate in soft cloths before sliding it into his backpack. He'd easily sell it for thirty times what he paid, not factoring packaging and his own labour into the asking price.

Magpie songs passed from parents to child—in this part of the world the females sang too, duetting with their partners. Law's song may as well have been a raggedy old crow's call for all the beauty it had to it. Crows were enemies of magpies, but Law made friends in strange places. Had strange friends from strange places.

His guardian was a methylated spirits-draining, cigarette-sucking, derelict who lived from one winnings to the next. Law visited him every second Thursday to make sure he didn't bet his whole pension on the first race of the day. Dropped in more regularly than that.

Cora loved Law like asphalt evaporates the rain—Law being the rain and Cora the baking pavement releasing hints of moisture that contributed nothing to the clouds.

However, the surface was solid and the only one clumsy enough to fall was the crow himself. It hadn't always been like that apparently. The clumsiness, yes, the dependency, no.

Law had lined that nest. Bought a comfortable little home in the outer suburbs for Cora—maybe too big for one, but crowded with two. As landlord, Law knew Cora would never be kicked out and the gangly corvid (and wily magpie) took advantage at times.

When Law didn't have time to fix the things Cora broke in clumsiness, drunkenness, or childish spite, Kid was called in. Why the spite? Kid wasn't sure. Cora had the look to him of never quite believing a roof provided shelter from the rain.

Magpies will introduce you to the whole family if you gain their trust. That shambly crew Law drank with—it'd taken him some time to front up to Kid's with a few in tow. But once he had Kid knew things were stepping up. Dorks, one and all, but Killer liked them, and they countered the skittishness Law sometimes failed to hide.

Magpies love puddles after showers, sparkling and reflecting the light. Diving and preening droplets through their plumage, tummy's distended, heads thrown back, throats raised, warbling about the earth as god's domain and their own. Kicking up a ruckus. Noisy buggers.

That was Law. Kid liked cupping a hand over the soft curve of his lower belly when he was relaxed, and spreading his fingers further.

Cuckoos and crows aside, young magpies were kicked from the nest after a year and begging was ignored after six months, the birds growing big and strong enough to fend for themselves. But not mature enough yet, no. Some stayed four years.

Space was a premium. The young ran in packs, in tidings, up to fifty of them, until they secured real estate and managed to pull a partner to share their investment with. Guard it with.

"I'd probably still live with them," Law said, turning a shiny coin over and over and between his fingers. Kid had polished it. Law visited and Kid had left it on the kitchen table in plain sight, next to the plate resting on the scarves he'd wrapped them in. "I loved them."

He says it easily about those he's lost. Never tries to hide what he gained, who he is, because of them. Who he might have been.

"I dug hanging out with them." The coin is from Flevance. A dime a dozen, a beri a bushel. When there are no people there is no-one to use, lose, and circulate the currency. Maybe the only thing from the forsaken city not made of white lead.

"You were ten."

Law laughed. "Yeah, I didn't have much choice." But it was better than anything that came after it. It was magic. He remembers that.

He'd wanted to please his mother and father. Lami and Sister's sickness made him lose sleep. But his parents loved him. He knew that. He was safe with them. In those days, he preferred strawberry ice cream to matcha.

Then he lost them, and he wasn't safe. Until Cora, until now. The bite of matcha settled better on his tongue.

Law's guardian was on the pension because his crazy-arsed brother couldn't stand that his shattered-mirror-vision wasn't the lens everyone viewed the world though. Especially Cora. His younger brother. His charge. His responsibility. So he'd taken matters into his own hands and shattered the disbeliever so he fit right in.

Cora had tried to take Law from Doffy's viper-nest of ground-glass blame. Law hadn't borne the brunt of his anger at the time, because the nonsense Doflamingo spouted was no less believable to the kid than having lost his sister to a fire and having his parents shot in front of him.

They were all affected by the white lead that gutted Law's home place anyway, so time was limited, but there were ways to say goodbye and Law never learnt any of them.

Certain parties had taken a liking to the Trafalgars' research on the disease. Law played dead as their delegation ransacked the house. Clever boy. Lami was bedridden from the sickness. The killers started the fire in her room. If Law had twitched a finger, he'd have given himself away. So he lay there, sucking in blood, the dusty carpet, and smoke as it filled the house, the street, the town. Buildings burnt to the ground.

Maybe there'd been time to grab her once they'd gone, but the intruders splashed gasoline and lit the match inches from her mattress.

He'd been lucky to get away—at least she'd been sleeping and he didn't hear any screams or calls for help—and when one of Doffy's goons came across him far from the white city, huddled in an alleyway corner, burns hiding the blotches of amber lead, children's services was the last place on the minion's mind. Nasty little fucker almost bit him. He'd do. He'd do.

Cora drank then too, though not to incapacity. Doflamingo. He'd been his brother his whole life. His mind was rutted and potholed. Cars drove from A to B—but not without breaking an axle or popping a tyre every now and then. If the vehicle skidded, the driver needed to read the room, the track, to make sure they didn't roll it. It was so easy to roll. Particularly with a kick or a twist or a retraction from the owner of the road, a buckling of the trajectory of the mind.

Doffy. Cora hadn't even thought of saving him when he was a child. Doffy protected him, Cora listened to what he had to say. That was the way of the world. But the younger brother grew stronger. Not strong enough to defy Doflamingo, but strong enough to disagree with the gangs he ran and the way he ran them.

By the time he realised he didn't want to be there, the window for escape was narrow. But it was there. Law adored the books and idea of power that Doflamingo placed in front of him. Revenge for everyone, for everything, that had happened to him. Rosi, Cora, concentrated on the books. Focused on the kid's absorption and curiosity.

Doflamingo knew the benefits of pleasure to keep one committed, to staying put. He dealt in it on the daily. Law was reading at university level before the age of ten. Had picked up a lot from his folks.

But the Family sweetened the deal at times to keep him studying, Doflamingo taking note that he and the other kids pored over the Sunday papers for that comic strip, _Sora, Warrior of the Sea_. Government propaganda, and it worked. They ate it up.

Buffalo and Baby 5 had learnt to read when they'd been adopted into the Donquixote gang, and Sora was their level of comfort, enjoyment and ability across all the written word. But Law understood or asked questions about the tomes of philosophy, psychology and physiology Doflamingo dumped in front of him. The comic strip was Law's treat and Cora won him over by slipping a few annuals and monthly specials of everyone's favourite marine into shopping bags heavy with academic texts. It took time though. Law wasn't bought easily (even if an ice cream usually sufficed with Buffalo).

A hero was a hero. It didn't matter which jurisdiction they represented. Cora peered in from the corridor as Law ploughed through one article after another, jotting notes, designing formulas, scratching at the back of his neck. Slumped in his chair, feet kicking against the struts, he'd finally reach across for the compilation.

Nothing could shake his concentration then, and Cora tidied around him, trying to stack the research books so they didn't spill, then sat on the single bed, smoking, his long legs taking up half the room, wondering if he could get Law away?

He could. He did.

Doflamingo's ire with his brother was lit further when Cora took receipt of the antidote to the disease that riddled Law's body, the toxin. The bratty little shit wasn't the only one afflicted and Doff had promised a high-up in the Royal Family (they'd been evacuated from Flevance) he'd get the medicine to him. Someone must have slept with the stablehand along the way.

The formula was still in the experimental stages, the Trafalgars having been assassinated before their hard work in creating an antidote was realised. The government had not released it, and was there any need to with the population succumbing to the nasty affliction? For all the public knew, it was highly contagious, but the threat had been eradicated.

The medication worked. It was effective. The wrong recipient imbibed it. Cora paid the price. The healthy became the invalid, the invalid recovered. Strong. Cora needed for him to be strong.

Law took care of his guardian from an early age. The small payout was enough to fund Law's attendance at some low level private schools. The kind that absently murmured about scholarships to better institutions, to universities, to intern programmes—to hospital residencies for those so inclined. So few applied. Law hunted them down. Cora was in agreement

Law started flipping burgers at thirteen, arriving home smelling of fat. His pay supplemented the pension. If he hadn't finished his homework at school, he'd sit down at their formica kitchen table, stealing cold soggy chips from the take-out bag in front of him, and completed it before he turned in.

In Kid's kitchen, Law pocketed the coin as if his right hand didn't know what his left was doing, as Kid knew he would. It's not that he didn't display his treasure, he did. Albums with transparent envelopes for coins from all over the world, Law's careful handwriting below each entry.

But he was a wanderer. Once from necessity. Now from choice. Light fingers were part of the deal. Kid smiled to himself. Couldn't wander too far. Cora couldn't look after himself, and magpies occupy the same turf for life. It's why some were so protective.

And partners. They often mated for life, though either man had wandered and sampled and fucked up and been fucked up by others, but had also found and been found before they properly ran into each other. In a junk shop.

* * *

Kid delicately turned over the plates, painted nails tapping against the china, while his partner in grime sorted through the knives. Killer honed the bluntest blade to shine, _zhwinging_ it along and either side of the butcher's steel, pressing the steel into the block he kept at home.

In the row across, a guy sorted through a transparent spearmint container, pulling out one Flevance coin after the next.

"They're not worth anything." Kid's voice rattled the dust and muted light that spilled across the worn carpet. The hipsters usually only rummaged through the clothes, searching for granny-cool and lenseless glasses. The old crockery, the crappy currency—that was Kid's realm, his treasure to find.

"I collect trash," the guy said, not taking his eyes from the task. They were the only three customers in the shop. Kid took in the ink. That growl of a voice was unexpected.

He rotated the plate again, and kept the scavenger in sight from the corner of his eye. His fossicking was more than that. He flipped each coin over, looking for...had to be a particular date?

"Those ones?" Kid was an expert. This was his trade. Plus, maybe there was something worth finding in that haul. Something overlooked. He moved his face the guy's way again. "Flevance? Not one date more important than the other."

The pierced git, yeah, Kid put him down as a git—never mind his own fluffy coat and ruffled pantaloons—the git flicked him a fuck you glance from under the brim of his poncy white hat. Wannabe hipster? An amalgam of appalling fucking taste, that was clear.

"Beg to differ."

Abrupt. Begged nothing. Kid was putting across his version of friendly. What was in there? He'd searched through it before and found nothing amongst the currency.

The guy pocketed one. The whole box was only 500 beri and all proceedings went to Sister Caramel's orphanage. Pretty low. Kid opened his mouth to protest, and the guy stared right at him, sauntering past, carrying the whole lot to the register, along with two commemorative coins he'd purloined from the small pile of collectibles Kid had piled up.

"Boss," Killer tipped his head, and Kid was at the till breathing down the neck of the thieving little shit before he knew it. Somehow the weirdo kept Kid at arm's length with an elbow to his ribs while he fished out the beri to pay for his purchases.

"Mr. Eustass." Dadan looked at him from behind the counter and she only used mister, only used his family name, when she was planning on knocking heads together.

"Mr. Trafalgar is also a valued customer." She took his beri, and Law carefully put all coins, even the useless ones, in his messenger bag.

Trafalgar, huh? There were worse names.

Bouncing off a doorframe, Kokoro wandered in, attracted by the commotion. She usually started on the wine just after lunch. The op shop was run by these two old tough-as-nails dames. "Law! Your book arrived. Y'know that marine fighting the bad guys and..."

"Sora," Killer said coming up to the till with the knives, eyeing the volume in Kokoro's steady hand, despite the slur to her words. "Warrior of the Sea."

Kid noted that this Trafalgar, this Law, didn't flinch, though Killer was three-axe handles across and wore a hockey mask. Killer bristled with excitement though. He fucking what...? And true, Dadan was probably scarier but this stranger wasn't to know that.

"Rare edition," the guy said, turning minimally to Killer, blocking Kid with his shoulder, keeping his bag on the far side of him.

"Worth a pretty penny," Killer said and Kid's ears pricked up.

"Mmhmm."

The Trafalgar dude forked over what was a small fortune for the junk store, but only the price of a value meal at the fast food chain down the road.

Killer whistled. "You'll get a good price for that."

Law looked at Killer as if he'd spat in the sacramental wine, which, to be fair, both Killer and Kid had done more than once in their teens. They'd torn up more than one vestry too as the altar boys only the fire and brimstone preachers could handle. It was why this Sora shit came as a complete surprise. Kid thought he knew his friend inside out.

"Not for sale." Trafalgar fished out his wallet though and faced Kid full on. "Eustass-ya." He'd drop the -ya once their territories intermingled, but for now it kept the both of them the further sides of distant. Not that Kid understood the speech quirk. It gave the guy away. From here, but not from here?

"How much were you planning to charge?" He set his bag down, wallet next to it and, after flicking through the pages of the annual, placed it alongside the coins, alongside Kid's coins. Killer's gaze—Kid could read them—was covetous. Salivating behind the mask. Who knew?

"For the commemoratives? The two." Trafalgar looked his way again, holding his fingers out so the number was entirely clear, "How much?"

Kid scratched at the back of his head forgetting the plate. Law's eyes followed it, amusement lighting them as the ceramic hit his scalp. Some kinda warning? Kinda guy who took joy in other people's fuck-ups? Once Kid knew better he realised Law had been thinking of Cora.

"What?" This guy hadn't got them fair and square, and now he wanted to rip him off and pay less than he should? Wanted to rub salt into the wound?

He shrugged. Pretentious fuck. What'd he need a hat like that for in this kind of weather?

"I collect special edition coins and wanted to secure those two." He patted his bag, now over his shoulder, then glanced at the clock on the wall. Cora worried when Law didn't keep his schedule. Kid understood all this later.

The coins were worth something, but Kid needed his books to pinpoint, and to then mark-up the price. Law pulled out a 10,000 beri bill.

"They're not worth this much. Believe me," Law said, placing the money on the counter. "Call it a spotter's fee," and Killer swooped it up before Kid could refuse, or murder the prick in front of him, or extort more.

Gobsmacked. Kid reached out, and his reflexes were nothing but fast, but this guy was shadows and sleekness and was by the door, wallet in back pocket, bag secure, before the tips of his fingers could even graze his coat (in this weather too, what'd he need a coat like that?).

"Thanks." Law waved at the ladies behind the register and they returned a distracted waggle of fingers as they sorted damaged clothing from good. The smell of mothballs filled the place as the doorbell jangled behind him. Kid picked up the two plates worth his money and headed to pay.

The door jangled again. Kid ignored it, trying to get Kokoro or Dadan's attention. The clomp of boots. Trafalgar crossed the room. Back for more? Good. Now Kid could punch him. He moved Kid's plates to the side, Kid homing in on the action, pulled out his wallet again, fished out a card, rested that on the lip of the saucer for change. Was the look on his face all business and only business?

"If you find any more of those commemorative coins or the ones from Flevance..."

"How about Sora?" Kokoro asked, sniffing a skirt and tossing it onto the clean pile.

"Yeah, Kid?" Killer said.

"That too," said Law, "But maybe your friend has first dibs?" Law glanced at Killer, all songbird curiosity.

"Damn right," Killer said. Slamming, yes he slammed, the knives on the counter. Neither Law, Kokoro nor Dadan flinched, though Kokoro complained about the grain. As if a hundred drunken bums hadn't burned their way through it when smoking was allowed inside.

"I'm interested," Law said. "You find them, give me a call."

A businessman first, Kid stifled his instinct to rip the card in two. The fucker sauntered out, the coins jingling in his bag, and Kid read it.

"Doctor Trafalgar?"

Dadan pulled out a cigar and lit up, regulations be damned. They'd removed the battery from the alarm. She was the one responsible for most of those burns in the panelling. "Yup. Works at the local. Few years out. Grew up around here. Cranky but popular."

"What's he doing slumming it in op shops?"

"Anyone's money is welcome, Kid." Kokoro took his. "And yeah, it's his turf. Been here most of his life. Treats some of the locals for free."

Strange fuck like that hanging around a dump like this.

"He's got roots." Dadan said.

Kid pocketed the card. He'd put an extra high margin on the plates to make up for the profit that Trafalgar-dick had swindled him out of, and he'd have to keep an eye out for those books for Killer.

He refused the bag offered and wrapped the plate in the soft cloths in his backpack. Killer did the same with the very dull knives.

* * *

Flicking through the _Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Numismatics_, Kid went from memory. The old emperor's face was on the back of the coins, the date a few years before the summer Olympics held twenty years ago. The currency highlighted that event.

The page prior showed a war year when only one very limited batch of coins had been minted. They sold for 30,000 beri each, starting price. From the smallest denomination to the highest.

He turned the page, hand tight, lips downturned, fingers of his other hand wrapped around the neck of his beer. He'd track him down if he'd ripped him off. If he thought Kid was a financial chump just because lalalgar was a doctor, he had another thing coming. He took a swig and peered closer at the page.

That was them.

Beginning price 1000 beri, finishing 3000 for mint condition, and even with a soft scrubbing (with a toothbrush) in soapy water, the coins wouldn't be anywhere near mint. The doc had paid four times the basic price. Not top dollar, considering any possible mark-up, but he hadn't cheated him.

Killer entered the room, buffing the handle of one of the knives. He laid it on the table, gently, no clang. Pulled out a chair, sat, kicked his legs out, folded his arms and eyed Kid's book. "What's up with the Doc?"

Kid wasn't sure, but he picked up the card Trafalgar had left and turned it in his hand. He fished his phone from his pocket and punched in the numbers, waited for the ring. If there was one thing Eustass Kid was good at it was securing his market.

* * *

**A/N**: Op-shops are called thrift stores in the U.S. and charity shops in the UK, I think.

Chips=fries.

I'm not sure if the KidLaw crew will like this, but there you go. I'm not sure of it, but I do like it. MarcoLaw fans, I haven't given up on them. Law's just so malleable ;-)

I've run with the basic conversion (not accurate) that for example 100 beri is roughly equivalent to one dollar. Roughly.

Hope Law's backstory doesn't drag.

Thank you for reading! Any faves or comment or other feedback love is greatly appreciated.  
Thank you, **Son of Whitebeard,** for your lovely comments. I sent you a short PM, but FFN doesn't give notifications now, so you might not have opened it. So, I'll say it here again, thank you!


	23. protect—rebecca

**protect**

* * *

Conscientious objectors jailed, protesters silenced, populations disappeared. Guns pushed against the temples of the hooded, the gagged. Dissenters led to soccer fields in the dead of night.

Loyal to the wrong brand of royalty and their king _had_ decimated them; ridden through town cutting down everyone in his path, in the army's path. Sabres and scimitars glinting from the light of the fires burning homes. Dold's forces had robbed them blind. Terrorised them.

Victors become justice. Those who won't fight are easily silenced through torture, death, status changes. Manual labour was too good for betrayers of the kingdom but cogs need to turn, so the treacherous were bundled from their homes under the cover of darkness to the factories. Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. Families didn't know where they went, soon forgot. Even the babas didn't remember.

Heroes were enemies and had destroyed the state. And then wouldn't fight. Defensive strategies left them standing and their challengers vanquished and won their battles for them. But they were weak. They'd destroyed the state and refused to fight.

The colosseum kept the hoi polloi occupied while their relatives inhaled dirt in mass graves, while they silently toiled, while the only sunlight they saw were slanted fingers through the bars of their cells. Shortening and lengthening with the seasons.

Rebecca survived. Protecting her mother's wishes and a legacy that didn't turn prole against prole, pleb against pleb. Not everyone born royal used power to suppress. Not everyone fallen from royalty used power to suppress. But power can always suppress.

Collaborators paraded through the streets with placards around their necks. A grandfather reported his wife for using the wrong spice, a citizen and toy whispered together after curfew. It was safer to condemn. Wiser.

As people spoke less, censure became fact, but Rebecca knew. She came from the family. She remembered a rainy night and a soldier's kindness. To guard the truth she fought defensively. If her life wasn't controlled by another, she wouldn't pick up the sword at all.

* * *

**A/N: ****Prompt: protect**

**Word limit: 350**. (mine's 348, I think, minus the title, until I edit more of course!).

I've always been interested in this idea of Rebecca very definitely being forced to do something she didn't want to do, and actually doing it pretty well. I expand upon if far more in an AU that ties into the whole Dressrosan arc in the third chapter of Taxi, if you want to read more. That chapter can be read standalone (I think).


	24. bitter fruit - robin, killer, marco

**A/N:** Spoilers for Wano Arc

* * *

**bitter living through chemistry**

* * *

Punk Hazard sure brought it back. A girl in a boat buffeted by ridges of ice to safe passage. Fire licked the water where oil had spilt. It burnt her island, her mother, the Library of Ohara. The scholars. The poneglyph would survive. Knowledge would survive. The key to it might not.

The same two men had caused the destruction at Punk Hazard. Akainu—known as Sakazuki at the time—hadn't made the Buster call on Ohara, but he hadn't refused attendance. And firing on civilians with no connection to the scholars, other than having lived on the same land as her friends, guardians and _peers,_ was no better.

He'd sunk the civilians' ship. As if scholars were not civilians. Sank it in case there were any scholars aboard. Called it justice. Questioning the World Government was an act of bad faith.

Ironic justice saved her from being on the ship. The islanders rejected her attempts to climb aboard, yelled out she was a target, a monster. Devil fruit hands lapped one over another in a knuckled ladder-rope. Robin tried to pull herself aboard, but she wasn't wanted. Nothing new there.

Aokiji murdered the one marine who had asked why. Why did the government hunt down those who wanted to learn? Robin met Pedro later, the Mink from Zou. He too was branded _pirate_ because he sought knowledge, just like her mother.

Ex-admiral Jaguar D. Saul froze to death at the then Vice-Admiral Kuzan's hand, but he'd laughed. Saul's will was not extinguished. The Ds. Never extinguished.

_Dereshi-shishi_. She'd tried to make the noise but gasps and grasps for air rustled the branches of her lungs. _Whywhywhywhy_? Because she'd read the poneglyph? Weren't the archaeologists the pride of Ohara?

She couldn't hear her voice over the screams and pop and snap of bridges and buildings and bones anyway. Not even to herself. Over the blistering of flesh. She felt it. The vibration. _I tried, Saul_. She had tried.

It took two figurative seconds to learn to defy while being decried. Saul told her about her mother, then took her from her mother—newly found, shot down. Would it have been better if they'd been incinerated together? Sometimes she thought so, but her mother had wanted Robin to live.

And here they sat in this room away from the burly Luffy brought into being after victorious battles. Shouts and jeers and clanking tankards and the off-notes of shanties ebbed and flowed through open windows.

Not Saul, nor Nico Olvia, but Killer, Marco, and herself. Robin turned a page of the paper as laughter bubbled Killer's skin. He didn't try to block it, too used to it. Time wasted if he let Kaidou's maladjustment, Doflamingo's experimentation, affect him. Stop him.

Smoke bucketing from the new factories disguised black moths. They blended right in. On Wano too. Their numbers had been fewer than their white-winged cousins before industrialisation. No longer. Survival of the fittest held a few surprises.

* * *

Cut off, Killer, had less world information than Robin who had less than Marco. But nobody knew Wano's inside story better than Killer, though Robin had peeled away the layers of Orochi's robes, and Marco sure had a bone to pick with the guy.

Robin continued on task. Must've come across some users already, Killer thought, and Marco, while puzzled by the whoops and guffaws and hollers of Kaidou's crew as they killed, complained and bawled in terror, figured the fear-filled cheer was something to do with what Wano had become.

Everyone knew when Roger had died, and Neko and Inu were able to get news out about Oden's sacrifice, but the Minks returned to Zou, and the Whitebeards hadn't been near Wano for an age. Despite Izou. Pop's own plans and visions were vast. His sons were loyal. Wano was isolated.

* * *

Payback, Punk Hazard, Prison. Kid thrown in jail.

"What were you doing, Nico Robin?" Killer asked. "Up in that cage?" He spoke a touch louder to compensate for the mask.

Caesar's poisonous gases had seeped through the illegal surveillance den den that Heat had acquired in some closed-door negotiation, the images projected onto the wall of their headquarters. Just before they'd met Apoo and Hawkins for the alliance. Before Kaidou had fallen from the sky.

"Were you in with the Hearts then? At Punk Hazard?"

Straw hat had quite a following. Killer's shoulders lifted then settled.

Robin took her time. Turned a page. Marco had brought the paper, rolled up in a pouch concealed in his clothes. Nami could have her gold—Robin took intel over cash any day—though the navigator also paid for information. Knew its worth.

She ran a finger down a column on the right. How was the navy going to control the seas without the shichibukai?

"Alliances have a habit of going awry," she said, and she'd been in league with enough devils to know. She looked up at Killer, thought about sending some eyes to the inside of his helmet to get a close-up, but Kamazou was known amongst Orochi's courtesans.

She'd not met him but the other women described the blue-crazed glare, and said that he was a Pleasure. A rush. New vision. Drugs did that. But the wrong chemical reaction created confusion. Smiles increased the number of human chattel, so maybe the name fit.

Doflamingo found pleasure in the torment of others. Orochi was no different.

And Luffy had let Caesar free on Whole Cake Island. Out of mind, out of sight, but not out of circulation.

"But, yes." Robin turned back to the table, folded the paper. "Our captain had joined forces with Trafalgar's."

Retrospect. Regret. Hiccoughs. Killer wished he hadn't ushered Kid out of the room, had stayed to see the poison sidling across the barren snowed-in landscape a bit longer. Seen how that government dog, and the cyborg, the cigar-sucking marine and his subordinate...how did they deal with it? How had they all managed to escape better living through chemistry? Bitter living through chemistry.

The betrayal would've been delayed for one. They might've seen what they were up against. Apoo blasting their hideout to rubble.

"Marco?' Killer polished a scythe on a scrap of cloth he'd cut off some poor sad bastard.

The commander looked over, a pleasant expression disguising his strength. Like Nico Robin. Killer was the same, but literally hid any tells under his helmet. "Flying through the skies, y'ever see Kaidou tumble down?"

Marco scratched at the back of his head, and Robin leant into the conversation.

Stranger things had fallen from the clouds, or had they? Marco bet a few octopuses had scurried away when he dumped the Queen Mama Chanter back into the currents eddying the base of Wano. And Zou _was_ an Island on the back of a wandering elephant.

"Can't say I have."

Killer tested the point of his blade, massive as it was, against a fingertip. He nodded. He placed the scrap to the side. Rested the scythe against the wall.

"Kaidou was so pissed off he hadn't killed himself he decided to screw with us instead." How did a flying dragon imagine he'd off himself by leaping into the void? Had to have been on a bender.

Kid lost an arm to Shanks, and Killer had almost lost Kid to Kaidou. But he hadn't. With the eating of the fruit, the Smile, he hadn't.

"We went to Ebisu," Robin said, turning in her chair to look at Killer and Marco more fully. "We witnessed Shimotsuki Yasuie's execution."

Killer was in the information game. He knew. Marco's eyes clouded.

"I don't think you were in the capital then, Massacre Soldier, and I understand you knew him, Fuschichou-san."

"Knew of him," Marco said. From the stories Inu and Neko told. The tall tales Izou and Oden wove.

Robin nodded. Doflamingo rarely stopped grinning when imprinting his misery on a victims' skin—if the ball was in his court—but he had the choice to switch to anger, his muscles could. Even if it was an unwilling reaction, the muscles obeyed his emotion, though his determination could override them.

The smiling god of good fortune, Ebisu, was welcome in all homes. Turning up unannounced was okay, but when his beaming face mocked the famine and fright of townsfolk, forcing them to treat hardship with a levity they didn't feel...when he outstayed his welcome…. Robin didn't have the words.

Giggles whispered through the torn shoji panels of the rundown rooms where the Straw hats, samurai and Hearts made plans. Kids played outside, eavesdropping. They allies had admired their resilience.

At the execution, laughter filled the courtyard like a funeral ululation while tears soaked the villagers' faces and clothes. Shinobu's distress. O-Toko unable to mourn without mirth. Robin glanced down at the paper. A smile plastered the face of a royal as he hooked a finger under his eye to wipe away moisture not present.

An uproar outside caused her to look up, and the flash of Franky's laser beams lit the sky. Cyborg fireworks commencing.

"Who's the strongest swimmer on your crew, Nico?"

Killer stood at a window, muscled arms pressed down on the sill, the lights danced over his shield. What were those burns?

He stared out at the melee. Kid and Luffy eating everything put in front of them no doubt, eyeing the plate of the other. Law probably given up and slipped away with his crew.

"Sanji's the best swimmer. Zoro's strong, but gets lost when he's not trying to fight the current. Usopp's good too. He doesn't get as angry as the others." As if Sanji ever got angry at her.

"But you rarely fall overboard," Marco said, studying his fingers and nails, the den den beside him asleep.

She twisted her neck his way. "No, not often." Her devil fruit was useful. She didn't play hide and seek. If she found herself in the water it was the work of an enemy, or bad weather. Of not being aware, and she was rarely unaware.

"Your captain, Massacre Soldier?" Robin asked.

"Fished him out more times than I can remember."

The laugh below the laugh seemed genuine.

"Wire can't swim."

"Fruit user?" Marco walked across the room. He thought of flying, but even his swagger had its limits. Killer shook his head.

"Then he can learn."

"Kid's heavy."

"Wire's big," Robin added.

"Yeah," they were right, he shouldn't question his crew even if Wire didn't like getting runs in his fishnets. Best to get information while he could, though, from the Demon Child and the Phoenix. Cagey with news because it was valuable.

Killer sat on the wider ledge of the sill and Marco settled beside him, pulling one knee up. This man had known Roger.

"What's behind your smile, Robin?" Slightly less formal. Killer turned Marco's way. "And yours, commander?" He knew they could snap his neck or break his back or try to.

Marco and Robin looked at one another. _You first. No you_. Robin decorated the round edges of the table with extra hands as she spoke, fingers waving like sea anemone, emphasising her points.

She sent that small upward turn of her lips Killer's way now, before returning her gaze to all the fingers dancing in conversation. Killer faced her directly to avoid distraction.

"The ability to say fuck you should be seen or heard or felt," Robin said.

Even when your mother was shot, your island on fire, and your closest friends executed under a bullet spray of government indignation.

Marco lit a flame and watched it move from one side of his palm to the other. Could he restore balance, restore things to what they'd been? Killer shook beside him. Not fear. Two of Robin's fruit hands finger-gunned the Phoenix. His turn. Killer twisted his way, and Marco rotated the blue, over and over.

"What our scholar said. Roger met his death with the widest grin. Whitebeard and Roger shared sake under the sakura, and laughter wasn't a stranger on the Moby Dick, or among the fleet."

"Fuck them," Robin said, as politely as requesting a cup of tea from Sanji. "They can't beat us unless we let them. So I always meet the enemy in my own way." All of her hands circling the table gripped together in a synchronised clutch. Killer and Marco cupped the back of their necks.

To smile in the face of adversity was one thing. For the smile to be the adversity was another. To mask distress in joy. To take away the right to scoff when met with brutality, stupidity, misjudgement.

How would Saul have coped?

With a smile. With a smile. In spite of a smile. Through a smile. When things got unbearable, it's what she did.

* * *

**A/N**: Thanks for reading. Written as part of the _Set Sail One Piece Mid Year Exchange 2020_ on tumblr.


	25. softening the fall of snow—Law, Chopper

**Softening the Fall of Snow**

* * *

Law rested on the tatami, the straw smooth and darkened from exposure and wear; his back against the greyed wooden struts and beams of the wall. It'd get cold in here if the weather turned. Shouji didn't keep out anything much, and the paper was ripped and torn.

He envied Chopper his ninja outfit, but he wasn't exactly stealthy when the door hitched and clanked over the ruts as he opened and closed it behind him. He took off his footwear in the greeting area—the genkan—and clambered into the raised room and over to where Law sat.

The town's buildings were old, and times were dangerous, but the allies removed their zori and geta when they entered the broken-down residences. Law's boots were safely back on the Polar Tang. It didn't take much to slip on and off the equivalent of a flipflop.

Weren't tanuki shapeshifters, and didn't the Straw Hat doctor's fruit also allow him to transform? His cap fit over his antlers and under his chin like a cowl, but his mouth wasn't covered. Clothes didn't necessarily secure the shinobi.

Law had been poring over a scroll Robin had whisked away from Orochi. Script ran one vertical line after the other, from right to left. Archaic—it was difficult to read—but illustrations indicated a medicinal text.

It didn't matter if Chopper's hooves snagged the floor's surface, it wasn't going to be repaired in a hurry. Considering how much the wind and leaves and dirt crept in, the place was clean.

He settled by Law's side, checked where Kikoku lay (to Law's left), and pulled his own short sword—his ninja-to—from his back and rested it very deliberately on the tatami to his right. Hone-kichi, Zoro-juro, Law-dono, Kin'emon, Choppa'emon, mighty swordsmen one and all.

He leant forward, legs wide, and dumped his own papers on the surface. A number of them. Law looked across.

"Law?"

"Hmm?"

"Nin Nin."

Law laughed. "You got the best costume."

Chopper nodded, his face scrunching up in annoyance. It was true. But he wasn't here to be praised. His body wiggled in what Law could only call delight, but the little guy ignored it and pointed at what appeared to be a sketch of Kyros' room in Dressrosa—everyone asleep, even Robin, even Zoro. All except Usopp, Law guessed, absent from the scene.

"Usopp kept guard all night," Chopper said.

Law's eyebrows rose.

"He's so brave." The Straw hat doctor pushed the picture Law's way and clipped a hoof on Bellamy's likeness, the grunt sprawled all over the floor, and then clipped the sleeping Law—arms akimbo, mouth wide open, Kikoku his pillow.

"Your crew was in Zou, with us. We met up there." Chopper got on well with Bepo. He tipped his head the Heart captain's way, then back at the picture.

Law investigated the image more closely. "That's right."

"But this Jolly Roger…" Chopper pointed at Doflamingo's mark on Bellamy's chest, then lifted Law's haori to point at the Hearts' insignia on the folds of his kimono, "they're the same."

Law didn't react to Chopper's touch but shuddered at Bellamy, at Bellamy's tattoo, at being compared to Bellamy and at his Jolly Roger being mistaken for Doflamingo's.

Chopper smoothed out more papers—bounty posters—before Law could correct him. The tanuki pulled out an older flier for Robin and another that was some poor impersonation of her. Then he pulled out one of the sniper wearing a mask and the one from after Dressrosa. Law had seen a copy in the gallery—not galley—on Bartolomeo's joke of a ship.

"Where'd you get these?" The older ones would be worth a beri or two.

"Thousand Sunny's library." Chopper pushed the first two posters across the tatami. "Robin's so beautiful in these, isn't she?" He sat back and ran a hoof under his nose. "They're really good shots."

Law double-checked the images then glanced at Chopper. How did minks and zoans get their eyes to sparkle like that? The cute ones anyway.

"Ah…"

"And this guy," Chopper speared Sogeking's poster, "He helped us out in Enies Lobby, but I don't know what happened to him. He was Usopp's friend."

Now he seemed sad. Dammit. Law picked up the Sogeking poster and swallowed. When was a good time to tell kids that Santa didn't exist?

"That's God-ya."

He then pointed at the 200 million beri man.

"And that's also God-ya."

Chopper's mouth fell open. Law replaced Usopp's posters on the tatami and ran a finger along the shorter fringe the Devil Child wore back then.

"That's Robin." He turned his head to the second flier. "But this one's an imposter."

"Really?" Chopper gaped at Law, then back at the photos. Some people said you couldn't trust pirates, but Luffy liked the Surgeon of Death. He wasn't startled, but certainly puzzled. He gathered all the bounties and tried to spot the differences or similarities by himself.

Law held the diagram from Dressrosa. Usopp _was_ good. He pushed a finger into Bellamy's tattoo. How had they not woken?

"This is _not_ the Heart's Jolly Roger." He held the drawing outwards and against the symbol on his kimono for Chopper to compare. He flicked the forehead of the sketched, sleeping Bellamy. "And he is _not_ a Heart pirate."

Chopper's face clouded. How could anyone tell?

Whereas Law would've left any other simpleton to crawl off and die, he knew there must be a cognitive misfire. He respected his fellow doctor, but was now worried about his capability to correctly diagnose any given case. But he'd only seen him help not harm.

He turned to a fresh page of the exercise book he'd been scrawling notes in and scribbled the Heart and Donquixote Jolly Rogers. He tapped his pencil on either picture. "The smile's not cancelled. One set of teeth, and see?," Law circled the points that surrounded his crew's design, "six of these." And an invisible spindle straight through Cora's nose.

"It's a virus?"

Law stared at the tanuki again at those words. Maybe the costume addled his perception.

"And on your hands?"

Pushing up the brim of Chopper's hat, Law put the back of his hand to his forehead. He knew from Bepo a fever could be sensed this way. Temperature, normal. Chopper didn't mind. Trust between practitioners and all.

"No." Law withdrew and touched the four edges of his tattoo instead. "Cardinal directions, like a compass, to keep me on the right path."

He tapped his pen against the handles on the Heart's Jolly Roger he'd sketched. "And the helm to get me there." He hadn't thought how to incorporate a rudder into the general theme, although Cora was nothing but.

"Submarine's have a ship's wheel?"

"Yeah," Law smiled. "And so does our Jolly Roger."

Chopper guessed it didn't look too much like Doflamingo's, but it was difficult to tell. His sense of smell was superior to his sight. He asked for the book. Law passed it over and Chopper flattened it on the floor.

"Because you're a doctor…" Chopper sketched a few x's on a new page. Kisses? "I thought it was a virus. Your tattoo. An antidote maybe."

"I see." The Straw hats had their quirks. Chopper spent some time hatching pencil over paper. Law only had the one. Everything was in short supply in Wano unless you were one of the elite, so he browsed the scroll again, teasing meaning from the ornate calligraphy.

The quiet sweep of shading stopped and Chopper tugged Law's sleeve and pushed the book onto his lap. Two pictures.

"What do you see?"

Law gazed down then righted the book. Skull and crossbones and— "Petals?" He jabbed the paper.

"Cherry blossoms."

"Oh."

"How about the other one?" Chopper asked.

Law straightened the paper. Skull and crossbones and— "Poison?"

Chopper sank in on himself. "Yeah." Pulled his hat lower than it had been. Law eyed the X on both the hat and the paper. Their medical symbol. A crescent in some countries, an ancient sauwastika in others. A cross to crucify or cure.

"You knew?" The tanuki looked sadder than his blue nose so Law leant back some, stretched out a little, and invited him to come closer. He glommed in.

"Oof." Chopper burrowed against his belly and thigh, and Law's back pressed into the wall, but he made sure the other doctor was comfortable. Law rested an arm around his shoulders as Chopper took the pictures from him.

"My mentor told me this flag could fight every disease in existence. It was a symbol of hope." He indicated the Jolly Roger with the petals.

"A form of freedom?" Law asked. Most Jolly Rogers were, depending on which side you stood.

"And faith," Chopper agreed. He turned back a page and touched the Jolly Roger on the left that Law had drawn. "How about this one? Does it mean freedom?"

"Whose is it?" Law checked first. He wasn't convinced Chopper could differentiate and wondered if he had some type of visual agnosia.

"Doflamingo's."

Law blinked. Correct. "You saw Punk Hazard."

The kids. "Poison," Chopper answered his own question. He almost ripped the page out but calmed himself.

Chopper also felt Law tense behind him and then relax.

"And this one?" Law asked.

Chopper peered at the Heart's logo, then patted the smiley face on the kimono.

Law _tried_ to follow the path of freedom and faith, to discover its meaning. "Yup." He flipped the paper. "Same as this one." He highlighted Chopper's first design. He wriggled in his lap.

"That doesn't make me happy."

"I never expected it would."

A grin flashed across the face of man and boy like the light spotting through the torn frames of the door.

Law circled the more traditional skull and crossbones. "And this one?" A symbol any doctor should know.

Chopper wasn't good at hiding his feelings. Fur against any eye agitated the surface, so he blinked tightly as he rubbed the back of his foreleg across his face. "I killed my mentor, Dr. Hiriluk, with amiudake."

"The mushroom?"

Chopper took the book and set it on the tatami again. A hoof either side kept it in place.

"It looked delicious. Doctor Hiriluk's book of medicinal herbs had it marked with the symbol for freedom." Chopper's hoof pinned the poison warning. "For faith. A miracle cure."

Chopper snuffled and scrunched the paper and moved back to hide his face in the folds of the haori. Handkerchiefs were in short supply in Wano too. Shachi was good at laundry, though finding clean water was a task.

"I didn't know," Chopper said.

"Your mentor was a doctor?"

Law felt one of Chopper's antlers against the weave of his jacket as he moved his head, even encased in Kin'emon's magical hat.

"And he ate it?"

Chopper took some time to answer. Law watched the billowing of his coat as Chopper tried to disappear and not cry, the monograms patterning the sleeve quavering. Shinobu or Raizou should have taught him some ninjutsu to go along with all the gear.

Law knew he'd be in trouble if any of the Straw Hat crew came in. Protect first, ask later. He was the same with Bepo.

"Doctor was dying." The words were muffled. "I'd broken an antler, twisted my foot, was all cut up. It was hell to find the one amiudake. Drum was a winter island. I thought I could heal him." He didn't mention how he'd locked horns with a fully-grown buck, the sheer cliffs he'd descended and ascended.

Law patted the back of Chopper's head through the cloth. "It was snowing?"

"It never stopped."

Law had also thought the help he'd sourced on a day when the snow fell was valuable. He'd thought he could prolong a life. Save it. He'd been so relieved, had lowered his guard enough to let a marine—a Doflamingo spy—piggyback him. Law led him straight to Cora's death.

And Cora had said he wasn't dying, despite the bullet wounds, despite the beatings, despite Doflamingo. That he wouldn't die.

"Why didn't he teach you?" Law shook his head. Didn't get it. "Why didn't he teach you it was poisonous?"

Chopper wondered the same. Why had Hiriluk cooked and eaten a toxic mushroom? He took his own life. Ended his own life. Said Chopper was not at fault. But how could he _not_ be? The brief moment of faith gained was lost with the doctor's passing.

"I guess he figured I'd learn the truth soon enough."

Lost within an hour.

"Huh." Rough. Law's squeezed Chopper a bit tighter.

And if Law hadn't been sick? If the government hadn't persecuted them? If Cora _hadn't_ cared about him and had left him to work under Doflamingo's Jolly Roger?

"Poison," Law said, "got a way of corroding everything."

Chopper peeked from under the haori's softness at the medical scroll. Maybe Law would share what he'd learnt, or he could help him decipher it. They should ask Robin.

"Why the petals?"

"They'll melt any heart."

Law hadn't seen the snow fall like cherry blossoms as Chopper had when he departed Drum Island to find the cure for any and every disease.

"Is it enough?"

Chopper thought of Law dissecting the children at Punk Hazard and extracting the toxins and how it had scared him. Bepo had said they'd operated on Jinbe and Luffy without anaesthesia. The Polar Tang was a medical submarine; there should have been some at hand. Even unconscious, the bodies might have reacted to the cut of the knife.

How the change in pressure affected bodies and blood pressure he didn't know. But he tamped his anger. They'd survived. And Jinbe would fight beside them, and Luffy led them. A few sakura petals would have helped, but Law saved his captain and new crewmate without.

"With knowledge, they help." Cherry blossoms in winter softened the fall of snow.

* * *

**A/N**: Okay—this is set in Wano I guess before Chopper heads off to Udon with Big Mom and co, and before Law storms off after Shinobu's accusations. I know they're all in different towns and parts of Wano, so you'll just have to imagine that they're in the same area for a short period of time.

Anyway, hope you like it. All feedback is treasured. Let me know what you thought 😊  
Thank you for reading


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